It was 2024 and Doyle F. was eight years into a 10-year sentence, the remaining stretch filling his mind. “I thought that I would just do my time, do the best I could, get out.”
But that year, Lewis-Clark State College began offering classes at the Idaho State Correctional Center south of Boise, and Doyle jumped at the opportunity. He continued the college education that he began to pursue nearly two decades earlier, on the Idaho State University campus. He applied his Idaho State general education credits toward associate’s degrees in liberal arts and business administration.
About this story — and about graduates in the prison program
Idaho Education News is not publishing the full names or photos of graduates, out of respect for their victims.
The 16 May graduates at Idaho State Correctional Center are in prison for a variety of violent and non-violent crimes — including murder, sexual offenses, drug trafficking and grand theft, according to an EdNews search of inmate records. One of the 16 graduates has already been released on parole. Most of the graduates are likely to be released from prison at some point, and several have parole or release dates in the next few months or years.
The Idaho State Correctional Center is a 2,128-bed men’s prison, located south of Boise. It is the largest prison in the state.
On May 8, at a ceremony in the prison’s visiting room, Doyle received both degrees. He plans to continue his education at LC State, most likely online, when he is released in August. “This is just the beginning,” he said, minutes after walking the procession with his fellow graduates.
The May 8 ceremony was a milestone for 16 graduates at ISCC. It also marked the continued growth of the LC State prison program. Now in its fourth year, the program has expanded steadily — bridging the barriers between college and correctional facilities in Orofino, Pocatello and the Treasure Valley.
Security, ceremony and celebration
A prison graduation ceremony has most of the conventions of commencement. Graduates, lined up for their entrance, wearing traditional caps and tassels and gowns, looking proud but also a bit overcome by the moment. Family and friends, poised in rows of folding chairs, eager to applaud at the first opportunity. A choir, standing in rows and ready to begin the ceremony with the Star-Spangled Banner.
But there is no forgetting a stern reality: This is a graduation ceremony in a prison. Before they can cheer on their favorite graduates, friends and relatives must first pass through two large and locking metal doors, a closely guarded entry carved into a pair of tall chain-link fences. No one comes in or goes out without passing through a metal detector and signing in with security guards. The choir, an all-male ensemble of ISCC inmates, is dressed not in black tuxedos, but in forest green prison jumpsuits.
One by one, every commencement speaker circled back to two points. Graduating from college demands time and commitment. Graduating while serving a prison sentence poses its own set of challenges.
So celebration took on a different tone.
Ted Oparnico, the Department of Correction’s education program director, congratulated the class of 2026 for seeing the value of college — and for “ignoring any naysayers” they encountered on the way. “You wanted more for yourself. You accepted the challenge, you climbed the mountain.”
“You’re proving something very important,” LC State President Cynthia Pemberton said. “Your circumstances do not define your ceiling. Your commitment does.”
“This experience has allowed us to prove to ourselves, and to others, that we are good men and we can be successful,” said student speaker Chris S., who received an associate’s degree in liberal arts. “We’ve proven that dedication, perseverance and, most importantly, vulnerability, will lead us to that path of success.”
With federal support, the LC program grows rapidly
The LC State prison program launched in 2022-23 at the Idaho Correctional Institution in Orofino, with an inaugural class of 40 students.
The program has grown rapidly since then. This year, enrollment reached 228 students: 114 in Orofino, 80 at the Idaho State Correctional Center, and 34 at the Pocatello Women’s Correctional Center.
Graduation numbers are up as well, across the system. In addition to the Idaho State Correctional Center’s 16 graduates, 22 inmates at the Orofino prison and two inmates at the Pocatello prison received LC State degrees. Last spring, LC State awarded 15 degrees in Orofino, and two in a first-ever ceremony at the Boise prison.
The program has grown, in no small part, through federal support. In October 2024, the feds added LC State to its Prison Education Program — the first such designation in Idaho. That federal designation allows students to apply for need-based federal Pell Grants — which cover inmates tuition bills and, said Pemberton, helps LC State run a free-standing program, without any additional funding.
LC State offers in-person and online classes to inmates. While majors are limited, students can seek associate’s and bachelor’s degrees. That makes the LC State program unusual, even among the 11 PEP programs nationally; only two other programs offer associate’s and bachelor’s degrees.
Pushing outside the ‘zone of comfort’
Midway into his graduation speech, Oparnico went off script and walked into the audience. Microphone in hand, he gave a few friends and family members a chance to have a word.
William W.’s mother summed up her son in a sentence. “He’s empathetic, he’s a kind soul and highly intelligent.”
“It’s very different than how (my parents) felt at the beginning of my incarceration,” William said a few minutes after the ceremony. “I put them through a lot. But now … I’ve been able to almost make it up to them a little bit.”
William started taking classes soon after he began his 27-month sentence. He deliberately started slowly, signing up for 12 credits. When he found out he could handle the homework in a day or two days, he decided to do more. Eventually, he took up to 10 classes at a time, up to 30 credits in one semester.
Recently released on parole, William came back to the prison to walk with his fellow graduates and receive his bachelor’s degree in business management. He hopes to land an office job, then pursue a master’s degree in computer science at the University of Idaho, starting in the spring of 2027.
Prison education was demanding, he said, but it also offered lessons about the importance of leaning in.
“Many people kind of exist within a zone of comfort, where they don’t put themselves in situations where failure is an option,” he said. “And obviously when I took 10 classes, failure is absolutely a possibility.”
Prison programs: their history and their effectiveness
The premise behind prison education is to prepare inmates for life back on the outside, equipped with an education that will help them land a job. But prison rehabilitation programs — including education — have surfed the tides of political sentiments.
Rehab programs fell out of favor a half century ago, as support “gave way to the ‘70’s mindset of ‘nothing works,’” Middle Tennessee State University professors Steven Sprick Schuster and Ben Stickle wrote in a January 2023 study of prison education. Tougher prison sentences garnered bipartisan backing. Incarceration rates (and crime rates) both exploded in the 1980s and 1990s.
As the U.S. labor market began to evolve in the 2010s, with the majority of jobs requiring at least some college education, prison education programs made a comeback. “The stakes for ex-offenders are higher than they are for others; being able to land a job can mean the difference between successfully transitioning back into a community and returning to prison,” Lois M. Davis of the RAND Corp. wrote in an August 2019 study.
States began putting money back into prison programs. The feds relaxed financial aid rules for programs such as the LC State initiative, allowing inmates to qualify for Pell Grants. This was not without controversy, Davis wrote. “Some argue that access to college education is challenging for their own families and question why their family members are not eligible for Pell Grants when incarcerated individuals are.”
But the research says prison education programs pay for themselves, and then some.
According to the Schuster and Stickle study — while compiles research results dating back to 1980 — college prison education programs lead to nearly a 28% drop in recidivism rates. Participants are more likely to find a job, and a higher-paying job, upon release.
Every dollar put into college prison programs yields a $1.61 return, the study found.
‘It’s possible, and we are the result of that’
When he is released from prison, Doyle plans to move in with his sister, one of several family members to attend his graduation ceremony.
“We’re not surprised,” she said. “Education has been a priority, but to see him finally do it, and here of all places, what a great opportunity the system has provided for him.”
But it wasn’t seamless. Prison education is, at its core, education in a prison. Online courses break down some barriers. In-person learning runs into its own set of obstacles.
Doyle applauds the prison’s deputy warden, Timothy McKay, for making sure students could attend classes even when the facility was in lockdown. He applauds his professors for being willing to teach behind bars — an uncertain academic setting where classes could be canceled without warning.
The process, as one of Doyle’s professors told him, is a grind. It comes down to not giving up, and working through the grind.
“(The Department of Correction) has told us many times, security is never convenient. And it’s not. We are incarcerated inmates going to school full-time, trying to earn a degree, and that means we have to navigate both fields. But it’s possible, and we are the result of that.”
