MuskogeePhoenix.com, Muskogee, OK

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September 1, 2010

Inmate education program likely to reap benefits

— More than 100 inmates at Eddie Warrior Correctional Center are taking classes this semester from Connors State College.

Most of them are able to do so because of money raised by the Friends of Eddie Warrior (FEW) Foundation. The FEW Foundation is a private trust founded by former Muskogee resident Suzanne Edmondson 13 years ago. The foundation underwrites college classes for prison inmates.

This is a good — and needed — program.

“Studies have shown that the more education a female offender gets, the less likely she is to offend again,” said Trish Baker, college coordinator for Eddie Warrior.

Connors academic adviser Colleen Noble has seen the changes in the inmates wrought by their education.

“As they start their classes, you can see their confidence level go up,” she said. “At graduation, you can see the smiles, the shoulders thrown back.”

We hope other prisons can find a way to duplicate the success at Eddie Warrior.

More than 25,000 are behind bars in Oklahoma — fifth highest in the nation per capita — and most of those are in prison for nonviolent crimes, according to the Oklahoma Department of Corrections.

If inmates had the opportunity to go to college and take advantage of it while behind bars, we believe it would reduce our prison population. We think it would help with the recidivism problem, as a convict with a degree would be less likely to throw all that hard work away and end up behind bars again.

But employers must be willing to hire a convict. And we believe if a convict showed the initiative to make the best of a bad situation and better themselves, they deserve a shot.

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