We are excited to announce that HJR27, which calls for the creation of a Higher Education in Prison Task Force, was adopted by the Illinois General Assembly in October. Multiple organizations, educators, and incarcerated individuals were involved in supporting the resolution’s passage, which was co-sponsored by Carol Ammons in the House and Kimberly Lightford in…
EJP provides for-credit courses and other academic programs to incarcerated individuals within Danville Correctional Center. While students at Danville take the same classes and parse through the same course material as UIUC students on campus, the educational experiences of the two can be quite different. Ellen Ritter currently serves as the academic director, after starting…
Over the years, the Education Justice Project has grown and attracted many international scholars from around the world. Their diversity in backgrounds and perspectives have become valuable assets to furthering EJP’s missions. Below, three members of EJP from different countries recount how they learned about the program and what they have noticed through their involvement…
The Education Justice Project started the Reentry Guide Initiative to try to answer some of the questions that formerly incarcerated individuals might have when reentering the world after finishing their sentence. Currently, EJP produces two reentry guides; Mapping Your Future: A Guide to Successful Reentry in Illinois and A New Path: A Guide to the…
When EJP was first in the makings, the group was treading quietly on campus, forgoing publicity through flyers and other means. Advised by both the University and Danville Correctional Center to keep it low-key in case of pushback from members of the public, and against the backdrop of a general pro–incarceration mood in the country,…
The Reentry Guide Initiative team recently printed 7,000 copies of the 2021 version of Mapping Your Future: A Guide to Successful Reentry — the largest order up to date. Of the total copies, 4,000 were delivered to the Illinois Department of Corrections and they will be distributed to prisons throughout Illinois. “We hope to get…
The prison population is one of the groups most vulnerable to COVID, and the pandemic hasmade incarcerated individuals more isolated than ever. That is one reason why the return of in-person EJP programming is so important. EJP members are excited to return to DanvilleCorrectional Center and resume teaching after having not been at the prison…
The Reentry Guide Initiative is one of EJP’s largest endeavors. The hundreds of pages for the two guides – Mapping Your Future and Returning Home – require research, interviews, writing and proofreading for each new edition. This year, the RGI team had an even greater challenge: creating guides that included relevant information during a pandemic,…
Welcome to EJP’s new website! We’re so excited to launch this new home for EJP’s online presence, and to have you here with us. This has been a long time in the making, and we hope you take a few minutes to explore. EJP’s previous website launched in 2012. It greatly improved access to information…