Jody Lewen is executive director of the Prison University Project, based at San Quentin State Prison in Marin County, California. The program, which was founded in 1996, provides a general education Associate of Arts degree and intensive college preparatory courses to approximately 350 people incarcerated at San Quentin. Lewen is also an advisor to the California Community Colleges Chancellor’s Office and provides training and technical assistance to colleges and universities seeking to create prison higher-education programs. She publishes and presents extensively in the fields of psychoanalysis, literary theory, and criminal justice. Lewen was a 2015 recipient of the James Irvine Foundation Leadership Award.
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Since the end of World War II, the United States has dramatically expanded access to a college education so that, today, approximately two out of every three Americans pursues...
While federal, state, and local lawmakers consider reforms that may lower our incarceration rates in the future, more than two million Americans live behind bars today. Many o...