The College-In-Prison Reentry Initiative: A Smart Investment for New York

Since 2017, New York State has gradually scaled up its college-in-prison programming with support from private foundations and public investments in recent years, including the College-in-Prison Reentry Initiative (CIP), a $7.3 million partnership established in 2017 between Governor Andrew Cuomo, Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance, the New York State Department of Corrections and Community Supervision (DOCCS), and the CUNY Institute for State and Local Governance (ISLG). Through the CIP Initiative, seven colleges and universities have been funded to deliver college programming across 17 prisons in New York State and have served 748 students to date from fall 2017 through spring 2021, helping increase overall program capacity by approximately 50% compared to the year before CIP began.

The two briefs in A Smart Investment for New York series document ISLG’s analysis and evaluation of the CIP Initiative. The briefs, Goals & Achievements and Lessons Learned & Recommendations for Expansion, seek to better understand implementation of CIP by documenting the CIP model over time, including: the goals the Initiative sought to address, how programs are established and how they operate in correctional facilities, the challenges programs experience and how they navigate those challenges, and the successes programs experience in achieving the aims of the Initiative. Additionally, the evaluation has assessed CIP’s efforts to implement statewide reforms related to curricular and instructor standards, transfer agreements, and reentry support, in order to inform college-in-prison efforts beyond this Initiative.

Download the Goals & Achievements report. For a post exploring the high-level findings, see our blog.

Download the Lessons Learned report. For a post exploring the lessons learned & recommendations, see our blog.