JSTOR’s Prison Initiative Reaches More Than 1 Million Incarcerated Learners
How JSTOR has transformed access to academic resources within the justice system
Education is a valuable tool for everyone, and having access to resources such as libraries and online databases is vital for researching and learning. People who are incarcerated have long dealt with obstacles to accessing the resources they need to pursue their education and research goals.
Many prisons limit internet access, and there has long been a lack of funding and support for higher education in prisons. However, JSTOR, which provides access to more than 12 million journal articles, books, images, and primary sources in 75 disciplines, is bridging that gap with the JSTOR Access in Prison Initiative.
Since 2007 JSTOR has made providing support for students taking college classes while incarcerated a key priority of their organization and, as a result, they today provide their digital databases to over a million incarcerated learners and hope to continually grow that number.
The benefits of JSTOR access in prisons are apparent when speaking with those who have used it. Students taking college courses while incarcerated describe how access to JSTOR databases gave them an experience that was more like a traditional on-campus college student and describe being far better equipped to engage with quality scholarship and create thoroughly researched academic work.
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Origins of the Access in Prison Initiative
In 2007, the Bard Prison Initiative, which provides academic programs for incarcerated individuals through Bard College, approached JSTOR for an offline solution to address the limited access to quality educational resources in prisons. Many students taking college classes while incarcerated face challenges due to restricted internet access and institutional limitations. In response, JSTOR created an offline index of searchable titles students could request physical copies of for their courses.
Since then, JSTOR has focused on expanding access to its digital library to people who are incarcerated. In 2019, the Mellon Foundation provided a grant that allowed JSTOR to enhance its offline index, and in 2020, the Ascendium Education Group gave it further support to develop an online version of JSTOR that students could access directly. An additional grant of $1.5 million from the Mellon Foundation in 2021 allowed JSTOR to expand its program even more. The goal is for every incarcerated college student in the United States to have access to JSTOR's databases.
2,000 incarcerated students had access to JSTOR in 2020. Initially, JSTOR believed it would take three years for them to reach 100,000 out of the 150,000 college students in prisons in the United States. After launching their expanded program, however, they began receiving requests from around the world. Within just eight months they had reached more than 100,000 students and the program continues to grow.
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What the Program Looks Like Today
JSTOR is now available in almost 1,400 prisons. More than a million incarcerated people worldwide now have access to this valuable tool to aid their education and personal growth. The initiative was recently awarded the 2024 ALPSP Impact Award from the Association of Learned and Professional Society Publishers in honor of JSTOR’s efforts to improve access to educational resources for students taking college courses while incarcerated.
When they first created an offline index, few college programs were offered in prisons. This was largely due to a ban on Pell Grants for incarcerated people, instituted by the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act of 1994. This ban removed the main source of education funding for students in the justice system. In recent years, though, Pell Grants for incarcerated students have been restored, creating a growing opportunity for access to educational resources in prisons.
JSTOR database access in prisons has grown exponentially, but that growth still comes with obstacles.The road to JSTOR’s success has required a great deal of problem solving and relationship development within the justice system. Access in a facility takes time and extensive collaboration with jails and prisons, requiring cooperation to navigate technology limitations, security protocols, and the differing needs of each facility. Some facilities only allow enrolled students to access JSTOR, while others make it available to anyone. JSTOR works closely with those in charge of administering and maintaining access to ensure that each facility's requirements are met.
Many prisons also limit what subject matter people can access, so they need to have control over what is offered through online libraries and databases. JSTOR has accommodated these requirements by offering three different versions of access. One is their offline index, which is ideal for facilities with limited technology. Another gives users full online access but disables links to social media and the customer support chat function. The third version allows facilities administrators to evaluate the content and remove anything deemed inappropriate.
Stacey Burnett, Senior Project Manager leading the JSTOR Access in Prison Initiative, shared the long-term goals for the program with EveryLibrary. They hope to continue innovating on the platform and discover where unmet needs are for their users. For instance, many students gravitate toward certain subjects, such as law, that are not explicitly taught in their coursework. Law is consistently in the top 5 disciplines accessed, but law is only about 3% of the coursework subject matter. Burnett hopes they can work to understand the needs of their users even more deeply and discover if there are any opportunities they can address on the platform in the future.
Overall, JSTOR’s goal is to ensure that students taking college classes while incarcerated have the same academic resources as those taking the same courses at the main campus.
JSTOR is a part of ITHAKA, a nonprofit organization with a mission to improve access to knowledge and education for people around the world. As a nonprofit that believes in the power of knowledge to change the world for the better, JSTOR partners with libraries, museums, and publishers to reduce costs, extend access, and preserve scholarship for the future as affordably and sustainably as possible. At JSTOR, we strengthen the depth and quality of research by bringing together journals, books, images, and primary sources on a platform with unique tools for teaching and exploration.