In the fall of 2018, in the wake of student protests organized by the Incarceration to Education Coalition group, the NYU Office of the President formed an ad-hoc semester-long Prison Industrial Complex Committee charged with examining the ways that NYU is currently engaging these issues.

On October 22nd, 2018 we celebrated our second NYU graduation at Wallkill Correctional Facility. Here are a few highlights from that day!

The Carceral Crisis speaker series is part of the spring semester course on Carceral Crisis: Race, Class and Punishment in America taught by postdoctoral fellow Zhandarka Kurti in the Department of Social & Cultural Analysis at NYU. Throughout the semester, Professor Kurti will be hosting a series of speakers allowing students to reflect on historical roots of America’s carceral crisis, its collateral consequences and current reform efforts.

All presentations will take place at 20 Cooper Square on the 4th floor and will be followed by discussions. This series is a public event and open to all who are interested.

NYU PEP students have published a second volume of work, written and edited by students at Wallkill while taking the 2018 summer course Creating a Publication, called “Voice : Voices of the Incarcerated with Creative Expression.” This publication follows a first volume of writing titled “Broken Silence” published in summer of 2017.

On Monday October 29th, the NYU Prison Education Program celebrated its second graduation at Wallkill Correctional Facility. Three students graduated from NYU with their Associate’s degree in Liberal Studies.

Photo and story by Sam Klein as published in the Washington Square News.

It is with tremendous sadness that we share that NYU PEP student Bruce Mobley passed away suddenly on Saturday September 22nd, 2018, only two weeks after enrolling in his first course with NYU.

One of his classmates, Gregory Headley, wrote a piece for Washington Square News about his lasting impact within Wallkill.

Derick McCarthy has been announced a 2018 Prison Writers Award Winner. His PEN prize-winning story, “The Box,” was first published in the current NYU student journal the Gallatin Review and won a prize for prose. Derick was also an editor of and contributor to Broken Silence , the first book of NYU Prison Education Program student writing created and published in the course “Creating a Publication” taught by Allyson Paty at Wallkill Correctional Facility.

Aunray Stanford writes about his experience incarcerated at the age of 11 in his recent piece “The Cycle,” published in Medium. Aunray is also a contributing editor to the NYU PEP student journal.

In a first-time partnership, BRIC’s Brooklyn Free Speech initiative partnered with the NYU Prison Education Program and graduated a class of five students with  certification in podcast and video production.

The Chronicle of Higher Ed. features the NYU Prison Education Program in a discussion about the role of Universities and ending mass incarceration.

NYU has received a $1 million, three-year grant from The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation to support its Prison Education Program (PEP), an initiative that brings a college education to incarcerated individuals at New York’s Wallkill Correctional Facility.

Five men became the first graduates of NYU’s Prison Education Program at Wallkill Correctional Facility on October 12, 2017. The graduates earned Associate of Arts Degrees from New York University in Liberal Studies with the program.

Governor Andrew M. Cuomo and Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus R. Vance, Jr. announced today that they’ve awarded $7.3 million to fund educational programming and reentry services at 17 New York State prisons over the next five years.