ALLENTOWN, Pa. — Incarcerated people inevitably look forward to their release date, but the transition afterward isn’t always easy.
“I personally had a great support system, and it was still hard for me,” said Adam Petyo, a Muhlenberg College research assistant and student in the school’s Inside-Out Prison Exchange Program.
Petyo, who spent a year in the Lehigh County Jail, spoke on a panel Friday at Muhlenberg on the current landscape of higher education in correctional facilities.
The panel also covered re-entry, with a focus on how formerly incarcerated people can find and keep jobs.
“Once that window passes, you get comfortable in jail, you fall back into ways that maybe aren’t the best for you.”Adam Petyo, Inside-Out student and research assistant at Muhlenberg College
The panel was part of a daylong conference — Response & Repair: Higher Education, Corrections and Solidarity — that was the culmination of a $231,000 grant from the U.S. Education Department. It was first awarded to Muhlenberg in 2022 and funding expires in August.
Petyo shared his experiences with incarceration, education and re-entry.
He said it’s essential for educational and workforce development programming to be offered to incarcerated people as early as possible during their sentence, “when they first get to jail,” he said.
“Once that window passes, you get comfortable in jail, you fall back into ways that maybe aren’t the best for you.”
While he was in Lehigh County Jail last year, Petyo took a course on mass incarceration alongside traditional Muhlenberg students and other incarcerated students — the crux of the Inside-Out program.
Now, he's taking a new Inside-Out course on re-entry at Muhlenberg with traditional college students and other formerly incarcerated people who’ve been released in the past five years.
PA CareerLink's LEAP program
While incarcerated, Petyo said he also participated in Linking Employment Activities Pre-Release, or LEAP — a program of PA CareerLink Lehigh Valley.
The program prepares incarcerated people to get jobs and offers support in the first year after release.
LEAP began at Northampton County Prison in 2015 and serves nearly 110 people a year. Lehigh County Jail began offering the program in 2023 and serves about 80 participants a year.
LEAP programming spans about six weeks in the correctional facilities. During this time, participants journal about their future, participate in book discussions, hear from guest speakers and prepare for job hunting through resume development and mock interviews.
Malik Hayes, deputy director of PA CareerLink Lehigh Valley, said the program supports formerly incarcerated people after their release by helping them find a job.
It connects them to training and assists them with conflict resolution at work.
Hayes said at Friday’s panel that soft skills are essential in helping formerly incarcerated folks maintain a job. Those include teamwork and how to take criticism from a supervisor.
Jess Denke, Muhlenberg Inside-Out’s co-director and the college’s community engagement librarian, moderated the panel.
She noted April is Second Chance Month, which focuses on providing opportunities for people as they return from incarceration.
What skill sets should be prioritized?
Denke asked participants what skill sets should be prioritized for incarcerated people to succeed during and after their time in a correctional facility.
Hayes said coursework on family reunification would be helpful to those transitioning.
“Nobody just wakes up and decides they’re going to go on a crime spree or do terrible, horrible things. Everything is based [on] trauma.”Jenn Siegfried, Northampton County Prison LEAP program coordinator
“It just provides a level of support and foundation that a lot of our folks who return to the community don’t have,” he said.
Jenn Siegfried, Northampton County Prison LEAP program coordinator, said she thinks there should be a legal mandate that incarcerated people can’t be released until they get a GED diploma. That's if they don't already have a diploma of some sort, she said.
“Your opportunities are so limited without a baseline education,” Siegfried said.
Siegfried also said there needs to be more therapy for incarcerated people.
“Nobody just wakes up and decides they’re going to go on a crime spree or do terrible, horrible things,” she said. “Everything is based [on] trauma.”
Mental health, morality clause
Bria London, a psychology graduate student who participated in Inside-Out as an undergraduate student at Lafayette College, said she also believes there needs to be an increased focus on mental health in correctional facilities.
She said jails and prisons should do trauma screenings and personality assessments when people first arrive.
“Sometimes just being able to be part of that conversation can make a huge difference.”Bria London, former Inside-Out participant as an undergraduate student at Lafayette College
She also said creating more spaces for dialogue in correctional facilities is essential. From her time as an Inside-Out participant, she learned people want to talk about their journeys.
“Sometimes just being able to be part of that conversation can make a huge difference,” she said.
Isaiah Samuel Zukowski, a Penn State University doctoral student and founder of the Rising Scholars Program at the school’s Restorative Justice Initiative, said legislative changes can increase higher education access for incarcerated folks.
Zukowski said Pennsylvania state law includes a “morality clause” that bans incarcerated people from getting state financial aid while serving their sentences.
Removing that clause would make education more accessible, he said.
“It is a relatively simple legislative change that I would say is a huge key shift," Zukowski said. "That would help shore up the sustainability of higher [education] programs across the state.”
