The State University of New York (SUNY) is committed to providing educational equity for incarcerated New Yorkers, currently serving over 1,000 students across 24 state prisons. When folks exit prison, they may want to continue their education journey.

In the upcoming academic year, SUNY will expand academic offerings inside prisons and re-entry supports for students in re-entry across the state. Creating stronger supports and more educational pathways for students who return back to New York City can serve as a model of what is scalable across the state. As SUNY expands programming, they want to ensure that participants’ voices are driving decision-making.

Public Policy Lab will collaborate with existing stakeholders to engage the voices of end-users in future plans for SUNY’s Office of Higher Education in Prison (SUNY OHEP). We willl work together to strengthen and streamline pathways for students transitioning out of prison. Over the next six months, we will collaborate directly with OHEP, CUNY’s Institute for State and Local Governance (ISLG), and other stakeholder groups. Through human-centered research and design, PPL will work with formerly incarcerated students to co-design resources and tools to ease the experience of reentering CUNY and other NYC-based colleges after prison.

Throughout the project, we will employ human-centered research, design, and implementation methods and work side-by-side with a group of peer researchers. Peer researchers, specifically people with lived experience of incarceration, will be fundamental to the project and the transformation of the prison-to-college pathway. They will assist with research tasks, collaborate on design concepts, and provide invaluable context to the greater PPL team about the nuances of transitioning out of prison. During the project, peer researchers will also gain valuable research experience and professional mentorship, and will be compensated for their time.

Project Goals

• Strengthen collaboration between SUNY, CUNY, CBOs, and other stakeholder groups to more seamlessly support formerly incarcerated students in NYC to pursue higher education programs.
• Co-design and develop resources with formerly incarcerated students that will improve their experience continuing higher education after prison.