Interview with George Chochos
George Chochos’s academic credentials read like a list of George Patton’s military decorations. He holds a Master of Divinity and a Master of Theology from Yale Divinity School, a master’s degree from the New York Theological Seminary, a bachelor’s degree in Social Studies from Bard College, and he is currently pursuing a PhD in Theology and Religious Studies at Georgetown University.
But it all started with a mistake.
At the turn of the millennium Mr. Chochos was incarcerated in Sing Sing Correctional Facility, a maximum-security prison 30 miles north of New York City. A few days of being in Sing Sing, Mr. Chochos was looking for the room that housed the transitional services program, a mandatory class he had to take while incarcerated.
“But back in the early 2000s, the transitional services classroom was right next to New York Theological Seminary’s master’s program classroom. And so I walked into that classroom by accident,” says Mr. Chochos. It was the only master’s program left in the state after the 1994 crime bill banned the federal government from awarding Pell Grants to incarcerated students.
“If you’re ever in the wrong place when you’re in prison, it’s called ‘out of place,’ and you can actually get a ticket and they’ll lock you in your cell,” explains Mr. Chochos. “So I was out of place and I freaked out. I’d only been in this state facility for a couple of days, and I got really nervous, ‘Oh my god, I’m going to get locked up, I can’t do this.’ But then I looked over and I saw this picture of men wearing the same state uniforms I was wearing, but holding master’s degrees.”
“God, why are you showing me a master’s degree?” Mr. Chochos recalls asking. “Are you serious?”
God, it turned out, was serious. Over the following years, Mr. Chochos was moved around the prison until, in 2004, he landed in Eastern Correctional Facility where he earned admission into Bard College.”
“I found the will to dream in a nightmare,” Mr. Chochos reflects. “After that first semester, after that first year, I said I’m going to follow that educational journey as far as I can go.”
Now Mr. Chochos is the Senior Federal Policy Associate for the Vera Institute of Justice, a nonprofit organization dedicated to driving change in the justice system by conducting research and partnering with government officials to advocate for reform. Chochos says that the U.S. government’s recent decision to reinstate Pell Grants for incarcerated students is a tremendous step forward. Not only will the reinstatement of Pell Grants expand access to education for the incarcerated community, but it will also yield broader economic and societal benefits:
“We spend more in New York on reincarcerating people who commit another crime, who have been to prison before—at least $200 million more than we spend on the tuition assistance program,” says Chochos. “And if you think of it that way, what could we do if people were actually, with their education acquired, becoming taxpayers, instead of the tax dollars going to pay for reincarceration risks?”
However, significant work remains to be done. As Mr. Chochos explains, “Pell by itself is not going to fund programs. Just because we have access to Pell—this is where the work comes in. Because now we have to create college in prison programs.” Working with the Department of Education to determine federal policy guidelines is another critical next step.
Reflecting on his academic journey, Mr. Chochos recalls: “All of my mentors, early on in prison, they had two things in common. They had some form of a life sentence, and they had acquired some level of education—literally, every one of them—had acquired some level of education, through Pell, before 1994.” “In another sense,” he says of his pursuit of a PhD, “I’m doing it for everybody that can’t.”
