Incarcerated Students Prepare for Graduation|Southern Education Desk

Graduation is fast approaching for High School seniors across the south, including students serving jail time. In fact, in Louisiana, 16 inmates from the state’s largest juvenile facility are getting set for cap and gown ceremonies. And studies show academic achievement behind bars plays a significant role in keeping the numbers of incarcerated youth low.

 

Incarcerated Students at Swanson Center for Youth in Monroe

Eighteen-year-old Ricky S. earned his GED at the Swanson Center for Youth in December. He’s been locked up since July 2011 – he says for getting in trouble at a group home. But now Ricky is now gearing up for graduation ceremonies in June.

“I wasn’t focused on getting my GED. And then when I came here, they were telling me they were going to work with me to get my GED and I could take my ACT. Then when I go home I could enroll in college. I studied with teachers for my GED and I passed it. I take my ACT in June.”

 

He could be released in July, and plans to attend Grambling State University in August. Ricky says his success is contagious.

 

“It motivates the others to do the same thing because once you get your GED, there’s a better chance of going home and going to college,” he says. “So it motivates the rest of the people in the dorm to try to get theirs. The other kids tell me to help them practice the GED, help them study for it.”

 

Ricky is hoping to keep on the right side of the law, and help keep the national trend of incarcerated youth on its downward trend.

 

 

The federal Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention’s website says that just over 70,000 youth are incarcerated nationwide. This represents a significant drop since 1999, when more than 107,000 juveniles were locked up.

 

Those numbers are also down in Louisiana. As of 2010, just over 1000 young people were jailed in the state, down from more than 2700 in 1999. A Florida State University literature review suggests that education for young offenders helps keep them from breaking the law again.   

 

Swanson’s principal William Lee operates on that precept. He says there are 168 young people at the facility; 140 of them are in school. Lee says that making sure that the teenagers pursue educational or vocational activity is vital.

 

“Some kids will finish programs and they’ll say, ‘well, I don’t have anything else to do, I’m bored.’ And it’ll last for a while, but normally they’ll come around and say, ‘okay, well I want to do this again.”

 

Idleness can be a problem at the facility according to Dana Kaplan, director of the Juvenile Justice Project of Louisiana. Her organization studied Swanson in 2010. The group found that there was room for educational improvement.

 

“We were finding that too many young people were languishing in the center rather than involved in substantive educational programming.”

 

Still, many of the youth use their time constructively.

 

Eighteen-year old Quinton C. is on yard detail at Swanson. We met Quinton last summer, when he was working on his GED and learning carpentry. He’s not slated for release until 2014. But he has completed his coursework; still he says institutional life remains hard.

 

“It’s difficult. I ain’t going to lie and say it’s not. But it’s better than what it could be. You actually get a chance to go outside your dorm a lot when you have your GED,” he says. “You get a lot more privileges and details. So it keeps your time busy. So, you stay in school and stuff like that and you get your education and it helps you get a job when you get out.”   

 

But earning a GED is important for lots of different reasons. Ricky S. says the program is helping him maintain a family tradition.

 

“Feels good. I never thought I was going to graduate school. But now I feel good. I did something - my whole family graduated high school. And now I’ll continue it.” 

 

Principal Lee says that graduating students will get an opportunity to experience something common to free teenagers. 

 

“Graduation ceremonies here are just like graduation at a regular high school. We’ll have a guest speaker, they get their diplomas. We have a valedictorian, a salutatorian, the whole nine-yards, just like a regular school.”

 

With graduation ceremonies set for June 1, Ricky is looking ahead – way ahead. He says that when he’s finished college he’ll open a hair salon.