Bennington College Prison Education Initiative
Since 2015, the Prison Education Initiative (PEI) has brought Bennington College faculty to Great Meadow Correctional Facility, a maximum-security men's prison in Comstock, New York.
Our mission is threefold:
- to provide a quality liberal arts undergraduate education to incarcerated students
- to support lifelong learning in men and women serving life sentences
- to foster transformative conversations around prison reform in America
In July 2024, the NYS Department of Corrections and Community Supervision (DOCCS) announced plans to close Great Meadow in November 2024. In coordination with DOCCS and college-in-prison partners around the state, PEI staff helped facilitate the transfer of all PEI students to other college programs in New York facilities.
In spring 2025, PEI will begin offering courses at Washington Correctional Facility, a medium-security men's prison in Comstock, New York.
Since PEI’s inception in 2015, the program has served more than 100 students at Great Meadow Correctional Facility, offering courses in literature, philosophy, social research, history of thought, architecture, political theory, social psychology, math, computer programming, drawing, Latin, and U.S. and world history.
Interviews with Class of '22 Graduates
PEI celebrated its first graduation at Great Meadow eight years after the program launched; eleven students were awarded their Bennington College Associate of Arts degrees. Here are a few of their stories:
Recent News
Computer Science and Prison ReformSince its launch in 2015, Bennington College’s Prison Education Initiative (PEI), a program of the Center for the Advancement of Public Action (CAPA) founded by faculty members David Bond and Annabel Davis-Goff, has worked to bring liberal arts programming to the maximum-security men’s prison Great Meadow in Comstock, NY.
9th Incarceration in America Conference Focuses on Outcomes and New DirectionsBennington College’s Center for the Advancement of Public Action (CAPA) hosted a conference on The Future of Higher Education in Prison on April 28-29, the ninth convening that forms part of the College’s Incarceration in America initiative, a project established formally in 2014 to address the fact that the U.S. prison population has increased 400% in the past forty years.
Bennington Selected to Participate in Dept of Ed’s Second Chance Pell Pilot ProgramThe Department of Education announced today that Bennington College was among the colleges and universities selected from a competitive national pool to participate in the Second Chance Pell pilot program.
Bennington Gears Up for its Prison Education InitiativeNow in its second term, the Prison Education Initiative launched by Bennington College in 2015 will enroll 29 prisoners at the Great Meadow Correctional Facility in Comstock, New York, in classes this spring.
Contact
pei@bennington.edu
802-440-4727