Ball State's former prison program helped 'rehabilitate people,' professor says

The first time Daniel Messel, the man accused of murdering an Indiana University student, was in prison, he received a Ball State degree through the university’s former prison program.

Although Messel may be headed back to prison, research shows that receiving an education while in prison reduces the likelihood of an individual returning to lock up.

Messel received an associate’s degree in general arts from Ball State while serving an eight-year sentence after pleading guilty to a charge of battery with a deadly weapon.

Ball State used to offer instruction to prisoners at the Pendleton Correctional Facility, near Muncie. The program went back at least as far as 1990, said Michael Burchick, a Ball State instructor of physics and astronomy who taught classes to prisoners for 20 years.

Indiana’s program used to be one of the largest in the country, according to indianapublicmedia.org.

Burchick said he first started teaching for the program because no one else wanted to have to work off campus. After he started working with prisoners though, he realized the position was more than just a teaching gig, it was a ministry – a way to teach people a way to live their life.

“There’s not that many programs the prison system has that rehabilitate people, but the college program really seems to contribute to that,” he said. “… as far as the prison program goes we had a ministry there, we were doing it not just as a career but we were helping make a better society.”

The students seemed to appreciate the lessons, both in life and physics.

“[When we] went into the prison we didn’t have guards in the classroom. We had almost zero conflict with students because if they began to act up the other students made sure that didn’t happen because they wanted the program,” Burchick said.

Despite Burchick and the prisoner’s positive experiences, Ball State and several other colleges stopped offering inmates the chance to earn a degree after the state passed House Enrolled Act 1001 in 2011 which prohibited people in prison from receiving state-funded scholarships, said C. Ted Ward II, Director of Student and Program Services with the division of Online and Distance Education.

Inmates at Pendleton Correctional Facility can still earn a college degree, although currently the only degree offered is one in interdisciplinary studies from Grace College & Theological Seminary in Indiana, said Evelyn Hicks, Education Director-Grace Community Education at Pendleton Facilities.

Pendleton also offers apprenticeship programs through the U.S. Department of Labor. These programs offer prisoners the chance to receive training and certification in programs that “meet the skilled workforce needs of Indiana’s businesses by training qualified individuals for lifelong careers,” according to the USDOL.

Programs are offered in skills including construction, manufacturing, information technology and telecommunications.

Prisoners receive a certificate upon completion of the program, which takes anywhere from 2,000 to 6,000 hours. Finishing a program also cuts six months off of a prisoner’s sentence.

The apprenticeship program offers an opportunity to not only learn work-related skills but also offers character education to people who would otherwise have a hard time making it after they get out, Hicks said.

“Recidivism rate is really low for men who have completed college or who have learned a vocation or trade because they are able to get a job,” Hicks said. “It’s the men that haven’t been very successful in school and find that they aren’t capable to get or keep a job and that is where the problem lies.”

Research backs up Hicks’ observations.

A study co-authored by Ball State professor Taiping Ho shows education is one of the largest factors in determining whether offenders would return to police custody after their initial release. The study published by the Center on Juvenile and Criminal Justice states that while 22.4 percent of violent offenders who had an education level below high school were reincarcerated within one year the number for college educated violent offenders was just 9.9 percent.

The numbers were similar across all types of offenders regardless of crime type, race or sex.

Another contributing factor to whether a released criminal would return to custody that was noted in the study was an inmate’s ability to attain and keep employment, which the study directly connected to an offender’s education level.

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