The Northwestern Prison Education Program (NPEP) is an initiative of Northwestern University to provide a high-quality liberal arts education to incarcerated students in Illinois in partnership with Oakton Community College and the Illinois Department of Corrections (IDOC). NPEP fills a vital need in Illinois by being the only degree-granting program in the state providing a full liberal arts curriculum—humanities, fine arts, social sciences, and STEM courses—to incarcerated students. NPEP is also the only postsecondary prison education program in Illinois that accepts applications from facilities throughout the state, including from medium- and maximum-security prisons. This enables NPEP to have statewide impact and to reach students at various stages of their incarceration, allowing the liberal arts degrees that are conferred to prepare students for success across a broad range of future pursuits.

In addition to expanding access to college-level courses for a systematically disadvantaged population, this initiative strives to enhance Northwestern University’s academic mission by fostering a dynamic and diverse intellectual community extending beyond Northwestern’s campuses in Evanston, Chicago, and Qatar. By providing undergraduate, graduate, and professional students and faculty at Northwestern and Oakton with opportunities to teach and learn alongside incarcerated students, NPEP is giving the next generation of citizens, lawyers, and scholars the tools to confront the grave problems that plague our nation’s criminal justice system