Dear Editor,
As the national organization for higher education in prison in the United States, we at the Alliance for Higher Education in Prison feel it our responsibility to challenge the framing and conclusions of the Jan. 12 article “Prison Education May Raise Risk of Reincarceration for Technical Violations,” as well as the study it references. The article uses a misleading and sensationalist headline, elevates an unpublished study relying on limited data, and omits crucial context, all of which have very real implications for incarcerated learners and the field.
Despite the claim made in the article title, the cited study by Romaine Campbell and Logan Lee—“A Second Chance at Schooling? Unintended Consequences of Prison Education” (July 1, 2025), which is an unpublished working paper—does not find that prison education causes an increase in reincarceration. In fact, as stated in the study’s abstract, there is “no relationship between education and reincarceration after we control for release type.” Instead, the observed increase in reincarceration in the study is related to work-release and technical violations.
The study authors themselves caution against interpreting the findings as evidence that education is harmful (p. 20, Campbell & Lee, 2025), and identify systemic supervision and release practices as the key drivers of observed outcomes. They also find evidence that education may improve postrelease employment outcomes (p. 31, Campbell & Lee, 2025).
The underlying framework of the study around the “unintended consequences” of prison education is nevertheless problematic. The study’s findings do not demonstrate “unintended consequences” of higher education in prison. Rather, they reflect outcomes of release placement and supervision level that are associated with increased risk of technical violations and reincarceration. These outcomes are not caused by participation in educational programming; they result from the structuring of re-entry and supervision systems.
Connecting the findings in this working paper to outcomes of higher education programs is misleading. Doing so perpetuates negative public narratives that many within the field (including students and alumni) work hard to combat and fails to capture the potential policy implications of the study. The study authors themselves emphasize that the policy focus should be around how education is considered in release decisions and how supervision intensity increases risk of recidivism (p. 5, Campbell & Lee, 2025). The study does raise important questions about how education affects release placement, supervision level and technical violation risk. Thus, the appropriate provocation of the study is to rethink technical violations as well as supervision and release decision-making, which so often sets people who are re-entering society up for failure rather than success.
The editorial decision to elevate unpublished research in such a way that it contradicts an established body of evidence is additionally concerning. Decades of research across multiple states have demonstrated that participation in higher education–in–prison programming is associated with improved outcomes. It is noteworthy that the study uses administrative data from a single state (Iowa) to draw its broad conclusions. Presenting early-stage research without thorough evidentiary framing has the potential to distort public understanding with misleading conclusions.
Indeed, a large body of research has consistently shown that participation in higher education while incarcerated is directly correlated with positive outcomes, including significantly lower recidivism rates. It is also important to note that recidivism alone is a flawed and incomplete metric for evaluating the success of higher education in prison programs. Recidivism is often shaped by supervision level, conditions of release and enforcement practices that vary from region to region. Overreliance on recidivism as a performance metric can obscure other, potentially more important outcomes (and also, critical gaps in service) such as employment, educational attainment, civic engagement, family reunification and financial stability. Higher education in prison can and should be evaluated using a broad dataset to reflect the real landscape of opportunity and well-being possible after people have access to these opportunities. The article omits all of this context, which is crucial to understanding the body of research and the study’s place within it.
How research findings are framed matters, especially when research enters public discourse. Headlines circulate widely and are often consumed without context. The framing of this article could very well have unintended consequences of its own. This article reinforces the problematic narrative that educational opportunities for people in prison are risky and that system-impacted people are to blame rather than overly punitive supervision and release practices. Sensationalist articles with misleading headlines like this one prioritize clicks and undermine decades of hard-won progress expanding access to college in prison.
Alliance for Higher Education in Prison
