A Contemporary Slave Narrative In The Era Of Mass Incarceration By Flores Forbes

Invisible Men: A Contemporary Slave Narrative in the Era of Mass Incarceration (2016) written by Flores Forbes illustrates the importance of prison education in the United States. Prison education is a program where inmates may be permitted to either continue or start their college education while serving their sentence. In this paper, I will address the meaning and purpose of prison education. I will discuss the importance of the policy, and how it may change someone’s life like it did to Flores Forbes. My goal in this paper is to alert other colleagues the important issue of education within our prisons. Prison education is a policy that enables education to incarcerated folks. The meaning and purpose of this policy is to increase the education to thus who are in the system, behind bars. By allowing inmates to enroll and continue their education, this policy has the potential to reduce the recidivism rate in the United States. Flores Forbes claims the recidivism rate in his book, Invisible Men, “Today the recidivism rate is around 65 percent. We

Forbes also mentioned the level of the standard he had received in Soledad Prison. Moreover, Mr. Forbes thought that perhaps his professors at Soledad Prison were cutting him, and his other inmates some slack. However, when Forbes went to seek Professor Bailus at SFSU, he was wrong. Flores Forbes recalled, “Maybe my prison education was up to standard after all. Maybe I had the right stuff to achieve my goals” (Forbes, 36). To put this in plain English, the level of standard that Flores Forbes had received in prison was up to standard. Seeing that Forbes was able to graduate from SFSU, and pursue a Master’s degree in Urban Planning over at New York University, demonstrates us that the level of education is up to standard in our