Should we educate those in prison?
Prison education programs lower recidivism rates and increase employment opportunities post-release.
“Prison education programs lower recidivism rates and increase employment opportunities post-release,” says Sarah Wood, author of a 2022 article in U.S. News and World Report. Postsecondary education programs come in a variety of forms, ranging from non-credit workshops taught by volunteers to full degree-granting programs. One program called TUMI, short for The Urban Ministry Institute, offered by World Impact, offers a four-year seminary level education intended to equip men and women for service in the ministry field who might not otherwise be able to afford a seminary degree. It was during my research-interviewing incarcerated men and women who were students in the program-that I learned how much of an impact prison education can make.
The killing trial
In 1993, at a noted after-dark meeting place for homosexuals in East Texas, a group of three men, one aged 29, the “ringleader,” and two others, aged 19 and 17, abducted a 23-year-old man named Nicholas West from the park and drove him down a rural road in their pickup. After forcing West to remove his clothes, and several minutes of untold torture, the three men shot West to death. West was abducted from a park in Tyler, Texas, taken to a gravel pit outside of town, shot nine times, and left to die (UPI, 2003). The three were arrested shortly after the incident, and they were sentenced to life in prison.
Donald Aldrich, the so called “ringleader” was executed in 2004 for “the abduction and gay-bashing murder of an East Texas man,” according to a 2004 Houston Chronicle article, and accomplice Henry Dunn was put to death in February, 2003. The third member, David McMillan, was convicted of aggravated kidnapping and aggravated robbery and received a life prison term.
I met David McMillan, one of the three, who was 17 at the time of the crime and now well into his 29th year of a life sentence, during a group interview as part of my research into the effectiveness of a theological training program in prison in which McMillan was a student.
