Educational Technologies for Incarcerated Students: Challenges and Recommendations

Two recent, historic developments make it crucial to zero in on how prisons integrate technology into their higher education programs that impact the quality of life for the 1.2 million persons incarcerated in the U.S. First, the coronavirus pandemic caused a widespread turn to educational technology (edtech), primarily in the form of videoconferencing platforms, learning management systems (LMS), and cloud-based office software suites. Edtech's extensive reach during lockdown laid a foundation for continued reliance on heavily tech-mediated modes of learning, even as "zoom school" revealed the limits of remote education for socioeconomically disadvantaged groups. Second, Congress restored incarcerated persons' access to Pell grant money for higher education expenses in 2021. As postsecondary prison educational programming expands, new institutions, practices, and norms defining tech use in these programs will emerge. Section I of this brief recommends two “best practices” policies for tech use in prison higher education programs. These measures promise to improve incarcerated higher ed students' digital literacy and protect them from edtech-facilitated programming that does not truly support their interests. Section II identifies three institutional barriers to implementing effective edtech policy in prison higher educational programming, recommending three corresponding systems-level reforms. Section III discusses the utilitarian framework most commonly invoked in debates about the value of prison educational programming, recommending that human rights and communicative ethical frameworks inform policymaking. With their more robust conception of human needs and sociality, these frameworks provide better support for policies aiming at rehabilitation.