Company uses tech to unlock education for prisoners

Prison lockdowns, solitary confinement, antiquated texts and computer labs. They are the common deterrents in a prison education program that Nashville entrepreneur Turner Nashe Jr. wants to make irrelevant when it comes to inmates pursuing degrees.

Nashe’s approach includes a mobile tablet that offers online courses to inmates. The tablet and his CorrectionEd learning system have been gaining traction with state correctional departments across the United States and will be used in more than 35 facilities by the fall.

CorrectionEd offers General Educational Development, vocational and college courses, with the goal of helping inmates advance in education while incarcerated. With higher degrees, the likelihood for recidivism drops, which means improved outcomes for inmates and less cost to taxpayers.

“My goal is to increase engagement, reduce the length of time it takes for an inmate to gain or finish a degree and to improve time on task and learning scores,” said Nashe, whose company is called Innertainment Delivery Systems. Ideally, “when these guys get out, they can go straight to work rather than playing catch-up.”

Among those released from incarceration, 40 percent of inmates are likely to return within three years of being released, but those who participate in education programs have a 43 percent lower chance of recidivating, according to a 2013 Rand Corporation report. Nashe’s thinking is if education programs could be improved, recidivism numbers would decline.

For Nashe the issue is also personal. In 2010 he was charged with money laundering and indicted with dozens of others in a mortgage fraud case in Ohio. Charges were later dropped without prejudice, but the accusation prompted Nashe to consider what would have happened if the charges had held.

He began researching prison education as part of his doctorate, and through his research and his job as director of Tennessee’s unemployment insurance division, he saw how people needed to build skills during their time out of the workforce to effectively re-enter the job market.

In 2009 10 percent of eligible inmates in Tennessee participated in the GED program, according to a Tennessee Department of Corrections report. As part of Nashe’s research, he polled Davidson County inmates and staff on why inmates were not completing degrees. The main reasons that surfaced were that inmates had previous poor school experiences, they lacked family support, they did not believe degrees would lead to employment or they could not find consistent access to a learning environment.

Correctional facilities might not be able to change someone’s prior education or family dynamics, but they could change how they offered courses. At the time, Nashe’s young children were clamoring for iPads and he began exploring ways to deliver courses through the devices. Inmates would not need a computer lab or texts and they would not have to rely on in-person teachers, who often live far away from facilities and can visit only so often.

Nashe’s CorrectionEd system allows inmates to take online courses that are offered by a state’s corrections department. To eliminate the need for WiFi and maintain Internet security, students can download courses and digital texts through on-site kiosks.

Depending on the facility, the cost of the tablet is covered by the inmates or by the state. While critics of prison education programs disagree with taxpayers funding inmates’ degrees, Nashe argues that spending on such programs reduces overall costs to the state.

The average annual cost of incarceration for inmates in federal prisons is close to $29,000, according to the Federal Bureau of Prisons. For every dollar spent on education programs, including basic education, GED and post-secondary education, $45 is saved on reincarceration costs, according to Lois Davis, a senior policy researcher at Rand Corp. and author of the 2013 report.

With budgets for correctional education being cut in state and federal corrections departments during the past decade, facilities are looking for ways to carry out programs more efficiently and online education is gaining momentum, said Stephen Steurer, executive director of Correctional Education Association in Elkridge, Md.

“With tablets, we can do a lot more,” Steurer said. “You reach more people and are also teaching computer literacy.”

Dana Simas, a spokeswoman for California’s Department of Corrections and Rehabilitations, said the state seeks to save money by using the tablets. As many as 7,500 tablets will be in California facilities this year, reducing the need for textbooks that are more difficult to update and replace.

“(Technology) that can be safe or inside state prisons, that can also help educate inmates, is kind of a win-win,” Simas said. “If an inmate is transferred to another system, which happens often, their education system isn’t interrupted.”

Given the strong interest in business courses among inmates, Nashe has partnered with Belmont University’s entrepreneurship professor Jeff Cornwall to create related video content. DevDigital, a local software firm that Nashe also has invested in, developed the software.

Nashe, named Innovator of the Year by the Nashville Area Chamber of Commerce last year for his product, said he is hopeful that this technology can alter the trajectory of thousands of incarcerated individuals each year, and he is gathering data as usage expands to test the tablets’ success.

“The investment in the inmate is to make sure that they don’t come back,” Nashe said. “These guys are coming back because there isn’t a lot of opportunity at their current skill and education level.”

Reach Jamie McGee at 615-259-8071 and on Twitter @JamieMcGee_.

The numbers

Inmates who take education programs had a 43 percent lower chance of being incarcerated again than those who did not. That means the risk of recidivism is reduced by 13 percentage points.

For a group of 100 inmates, reincarceration costs are at least $870,000 less for those who receive correctional education. Education costs for 100 inmates costs as much as $174,000, or $1,744 per inmate.

Sources: Rand Corp.