Lauren Bianco was in her late 20s, addicted to heroin and other drugs and had recently lost her home when she was arrested in 2013 after an armed robbery to support her drug habit.
Bianco, 34, of Eagleswood Township spent six and half years in prison. Two years in, she was introduced to NJ-STEP, a program through which she could build upon the associate’s degree she had already obtained toward a bachelor’s degree.
“I didn’t want to sit and waste my time. I already wasted enough of my life,” she said. “When I went away my son was 6. I came home he turned 13. I literally missed his whole life. It wasn’t an option for me to come home and not be OK.”
Thanks to a new law signed by Gov. Phil Murphy earlier this month, state tuition aid will now permanently be available to New Jersey residents who are incarcerated, enshrining an experimental federal education effort that began under the Obama administration re-opening access to higher education in prison.
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The law is part of a series of legislation passed under Murphy opening educational opportunities in prisons.
Proponents of the legislation say the law is not only a win for those who are incarcerated through reduced rates of recidivism and opportunities for well-paying careers, but also the communities they return to once they leave prison.
“When they leave, they have hope,” said Sheila R. Meiman, director of Returning & Incarcerated Student Education (RISE) at Raritan Valley Community College, which helps administer NJ-STEP. “If we’re going to bring people back to a community, we want them as a society to be contributing members. I want them to be earning, paying taxes, being good community members. And education makes that happen.”
Statistics show that people who have access to higher education in prison are 48 percent less likely to return to prison. The state’s current recidivism rate is 31 percent.
In addition, a report from the Vera Institute of Justice and the Georgetown Center on Poverty and Inequality found increased earning potential, larger pools of skilled workers for employers to draw from, and reduced prison costs from lowering the rate of recidivism.
NJ-STEP, short for New Jersey Scholarship and Transformative Education in Prisons Consortium, is a partnership between New Jersey Department of Corrections, Raritan Valley Community College and Rutgers University-Newark that offers associate’s and bachelor’s degree programs to qualifying prisoners within the state prisons. There are also several other colleges, especially Princeton University, that contribute instructors and other resources to the program.
When a prisoner is released, if they did not finish their degree, they have the opportunity to apply and enroll in other colleges with assistance from NJ-STEP.
Prior to 2016, NJ-STEP was entirely funded through private money and institutions. Under President Barack Obama, the Department of Education instituted the Second Chance Pell Experimental Sites Initiative giving NJ-STEP the opportunity to use the Pell grants to offset the cost of education in prisons. Now, the availability of TAG money will make the program sustainable, said NJ-STEP Director Chris Agans.
Agans said the student outcomes are tremendous, so far.
“We have folks who are working for all sectors of industry,” Agans said. “A large number of our folks go into social work and nonprofits.”
He said the graduates are “uniquely qualified for that work because of their lived experiences.”
Allen Tally was 30 years old when he went to prison in 1989, facing 25 years to life, on robbery and aggravated assault charges — a father, an addict and uneducated.
At age 56, Tally enrolled a program called NJ-STEP, where he began taking classes toward a college degree. Now, after being released from South Woods State Prison last year, he is on his way to a bachelor’s in social work from Rutgers-Camden.
“I’m somewhere where I was never supposed to be. I’m no longer the person I once was. I am educated now and all I needed was an opportunity,” Tally said.
Bianco said NJ-STEP allowed her to make good from a bad situation. When she was released to a halfway house after leaving prison, she applied to Rutgers-Camden and was accepted. She will graduate in May with a bachelor’s degree in psychology and a double minor in criminal justice and sociology. She is applying to graduate school now.
Bianco currently works as a peer recovery specialist in Camden County, finding a purpose in her current position to be able to help those who are in the same place she was seven years ago.
“They hired me because I’m educated and I can absolutely relate to any story that walks in the door,” Bianco said.
She said that allowing prisoners a chance to further their education will help those who want to better themselves.
“Education can help somebody, give them hope, and give them a chance,” Bianco said. “At 34 years old, it’s depressing to know that I’ve lost all of them years and if I didn’t have something to look forward to — I can get this degree and do something — I don’t know what I would be doing right now.”
Meiman, who started out teaching math as part of NJ-STEP 10 years ago, said they have seen a dramatic shift in students from when they begin taking classes to when they graduate.
“We get them fresh. They’re brand new students walking in, normally the first college class they’ve ever tried. They have a self-definition. They view themselves as inmates,” she said.
When the prisoners also become students, they begin defining themselves as students and scholars, and their pride increases and their aspirations rise.
“They don’t want to go back to the way they were,” Meiman.
For Tally, who now lives in Pleasantville, pursuing his education while in prison made it easier for him to continue when he was released to the halfway house, but the transition back to society in October was difficult and he admitted he stumbled a bit.
“Life came at me at a whole different level,” Tally said.
He was able to work with Rutgers and continue on a path to his degree as a full-time student.
He is also working part-time, but said finding a job in line with his education has been hard because of the 30-year gap in employment and criminal background checks. He hasn’t given up hope.
“I keep moving on because I know sooner or later someone’s going to give me an opportunity and I’m going to prove I’m worthy of this opportunity,” Tally said.
Tally said he wants to use his degree “to save children who were once like me.”
“I was a troubled youth. I didn’t have any guidance and it led me the wrong way. I think based on my life experience the things that I’ve been through I can contribute, especially (to) young black youth like me,” Tally said. “I went from a prison cell to one of the top universities in the state, and I’m doing my thing and I’m successful.”
