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BPR Interviews: Andres Idarraga

BPR: What was your journey to Brown like, and what was your education like before becoming incarcerated?

AI: I was always a really good student, but I grew up in distressed areas where people were generally low-income. In those environments, there’s a lot of temptation for kids to go astray. Even though I began going a bit astray, I was recognized for my academic performance. I went from Central Falls High School—which was at that time a high school that made national headlines because of its dysfunction—to a scholarship to the Moses Brown School. It showed me the wide disparities in education delivery. It was a culture shock. I didn’t adapt well and I ended up dropping out and retreating back to my area school. For some perverse reason, instead of the experience providing the pathway to higher education, it engendered an anger inside me. It was the first time I saw what I was missing out on and it me turned into an angry young man. I began skipping school, my grades dropped, and I began dabbling in selling drugs. I was grappling with my circumstances and retreating to them in a destructive way. I managed to graduate high school. Even though I barely performed senior year, I still made National Honor Society, Rhode Island Honor Society and had some other academic awards. But I didn’t even apply to college. I just began to sell drugs, was arrested, and ended up going to prison for six and a half years. At the beginning of my time in prison, I spent my time… not very productively. I did a fair amount of exercise, played cards, but didn’t really think about my future. I was resigned to being a stereotype, a statistic, someone that was going to be released from prison and struggle through life, somebody that might go in and out of prison. Gradually, through reading, being in touch with other folks inside the prison that were well read and had a hunger to educate themselves, and volunteering at a GED class, I began to gather the tools to think about my future on my own terms. It made me reflect on my time at Moses Brown… It made me angry as a young man to see the disparities, but as a person in prison in my early 20s, that experience really helped me believe that I could transcend the circumstances I was in through my education. I had been at Moses Brown and classmates had gone on to top colleges in the US and those folks had been in classes with me—and I thought that I could hold my own in class and had a similar skillset—it gave me the confidence to really think that I could use education, to create something for myself and my community. So in prison, I began to apply to colleges. At about my five-year mark, I wanted to be prepared to show the parole board concrete evidence that I was willing to turn my life around. I applied to Brown University from a prison cell and was denied, but was fortunate enough to be accepted to the University of Rhode Island. The parole board gave me a release date in time to start at URI. When I was released, I lived under pretty tough circumstances, but it didn’t make me angry, because for the first time in my life, I had a sense of purpose—a vision that was formulated during my time in prison. I always quote an educator who said that in distressed areas in this country, it’s not physical violence that really takes a toll on young men and women It’s the mental violence of never really having a purpose. When I was going to URI, I had a mission. During my first and second semesters, I received top grades, and with the encouragement of a professor, I applied to Brown again. It was the only school I applied to and I was fortunate enough to be accepted. That was very emotional for me. I felt that with that letter in my hand, I was going to be introduced to a stream of opportunities that would be completely transformational. And it was. I performed well, graduated with dual degrees in comparative literature and economics and was accepted to Yale Law School. And after Yale Law School, went to work at one of the top law firms in this country working on cases all the way up to the Supreme Court. And today, I have my nonprofit foundation, the Transcending Through Education Foundation, where the work that we do is going back to prisons to pay it forward.

BPR: What do you think of the Brown Prison Initiative and what do you see its benefits being?

AI: I think providing education in a prison system is something that college institutions would be well-served to do for a number of reasons. But particularly in Brown’s case, I think it plays into the mission of Brown trying to be a community player in the Rhode Island area. Specifically, as it thinks about its social role in light of its historical context in Rhode Island, particularly things revolving around slavery. So I think as an institution, it should play a role in providing education to certain segments of the community that have traditionally not had access to it. Second, I think for motivated individuals in prison to know that Brown would go in there and help them develop their skillset would be tremendously empowering and motivational. I think they can motivate people inside prisons to take their education much more seriously. And third, I think it could validate the skillset of people coming home from prison. Brown obviously has a brand nationally, internationally, and particularly amplified locally in Rhode Island. So if a person comes home from prison and could say they began their educational journey taking Brown courses in prison, I think it gives them a credibility when they’re applying to other educational institutions.

BPR: What role does education play in reentry for into the community after release?

AI: On a very practical level, getting a college education brings you to a higher income level. If we look at statistics, a high school dropout makes about $25,000 a year. A high school graduate makes a little more. But a college graduate makes close to $60,000 a year on average. Those types of financial resources really help folks in communities that are economically distressed. I think that provides benefits to the person, but it also provides benefits to the communities and the society at large because of taxes. It has other benefits as well. I think an informed citizen is much more engaged in the health of the community, engaged in the health of their political bodies, and feel a bigger sense of responsibility and stewardship to those communities. Immediately after school, I started the nonprofit. I recently also started a college scholarship program in a small town in Columbia that was very much ravaged by the Civil War. I’m always more conscious about how can I help the places that I come from, and I think that is a big byproduct of being a more informed person through education.

BPR: What is your response to people who stand on the other side of this issue and think that people who are convicted criminals are the last people that we should be investing in?

AI: Supporting the educational endeavors of people in prison shows to have economic benefits, where I think every dollar invested education produces about $15 in economic benefits for society. If we’re concerned with reducing crime rates, we see that folks the recidivism rate goes down drastically when a person gets an education. They break the cycle of incarceration and poverty. When we think of it holistically, I think we make a very compelling argument, and we have to get passed that surface-level argument that can be appealing at first sight. Some of the arguments that folks may make is questioning why they should have to pay for their children’s education when somebody could go to prison and get an education at little to no cost. I think the argument is misplaced. When we look at the cost of a college education in the United States, there’s a sticker price and there’s an actual price. For the most part, in the United States if you cannot afford a college education, there are programs for you to be able to get financial aid for a college education. You might not be able to use those programs in every single institution, but there will be institutions for you to qualify. If you can’t afford it, there are those mechanisms out there. Now, you might not get a free ride if you’re wealthy enough to afford it and therefore will not be eligible for these programs. And in that case, I think if you’re in a position where you don’t qualify for financial aid and you could just write a check for your children’s education, I think you’re in a fortunate enough place where you should be responsible for paying for your children’s education. That will be my position when my kids get older.

 

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