Our Mission
To democratize access to tertiary education for those who have been historically marginalized or otherwise unable to attend college.
EPI provides a rigorous liberal arts education to individuals incarcerated in Massachusetts. We believe education is fundamentally transformative. EPI aims to offer courses that are as similar as possible to our Boston campus in order to equip students with critical thinking and communication skills to enable them to engage, critique, and transform the world around them.
Our Values
- Access to higher education benefits both individuals and society. All people have the potential to build the critical skills and broad knowledge higher education provides.
- College and its associated skills help create community members who are informed and better prepared to be active and engaged decision-makers. Seeing and intervening in structural inequities is fundamental to social transformation.
- Public safety must be redefined to include restorative justice, the redressing of harm, and tools for personal transformation.
- College in prison works to break down the isolation and dehumanization that many people experience when they are involved in the carceral system. Through our work, we seek to make visible the way that intellectual connections help repair the harms of incarceration.
- Upholding the integrity of college in prison is part of charting new ways of relating to one another.
- We prioritize the inherent value of all people regardless of circumstance. We ascribe to an ethics of care as educators that shapes our responsibilities toward students.
- Honoring individual agency is key to this work. Students are active participants in their own learning pathways.
- Responsibility, transparency, and accountability are necessary parts of our conduct as an organization.