How To Organize a Community Sponsor Project

Framing Effects and Group Differences in Public Opinion about Prison Pell Grants

“…Despite the evidence that access to education in prisons is good for both prisoners and society, Congress stripped prisoners of Pell Grant eligibility in the 1994 Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act. The politics of “least eligibility” fueled support for this restriction; legislators argued that no criminal should have access to any benefit that the poorest law-abiding citizen cannot also receive—and millions of citizens never receive a college education (Clear 1994; Lewis 2018). Educational benefits for prisoners are a prime example of the ways that politics can conflict with evidence-based policy making.…”