Indiana Expands Computer Training for Prison Inmates
(PENDLETON, Ind.) – Indiana’s expanding its effort to turn prisoners into programmers, with a big assist from Google.
Google is donating $2 million to the Last Mile, the nonprofit devoted to teaching computer coding skills to prison inmates with good conduct records who are approaching their release. The program began at California’s San Quentin prison, and expanded to the Indiana Women’s Prison in April, its first outpost outside California.
Governor Holcomb says the program has the potential to help with two Indiana challenges: increasing the state’s skilled workforce, and helping released inmates to successfully reenter society. He says not one graduate of the San Quentin program has landed back behind bars.
The Google grant will bring the program to the Pendleton juvenile prison, with more Indiana prisons and facilities in Oklahoma and Kansas coming online in the next two years. It’ll also upgrade the computer hardware at the women’s prison to allow Google instructors to teach coding classes over the Internet.
The first nine students in the women’s prison graduated Tuesday, the same day Holcomb joined Google executives and Last Mile board members for a ribbon-cutting at Pendleton. The inaugural class of 12 students has already begun classes.
Google has set a target of training 525 coders over the two-year life of the grant.
Last Mile’s board members include ’90s rap star MC Hammer, who attended the launch of the Women’s Prison program and returned to Indiana for the Pendleton ribbon-cutting.
(Photo: Eric Berman/WIBC)
