Princeton Donates 52 Laptops for Incarcerated N.J. College Students

Princeton University donated 52 laptops and other technology that will be used by undergraduate students incarcerated in two New Jersey prisons. The donation was recognized at a Jan. 29 event that included remarks by the commissioner of the state’s Department of Corrections (DOC) and marked 20 years since the launch of the University’s Prison Teaching Initiative (PTI), which provides education to incarcerated students. 

The University’s donation also included 60 pairs of noise-cancelling headphones, which will especially help with foreign language courses, two printers, and other related equipment. An anonymous member of Princeton’s alumni community funded the donations, according to remarks by Provost Jennifer Rexford ’91. 

Although PTI students already had access to computers through a computer literacy course, undergraduates in East Jersey State Prison and Edna Mahan Correctional Facility for Women can now use these laptops to complete other coursework. About 300 students per semester will have access to the equipment. 

John Stys, who is currently pursuing a bachelor’s in information technology and informatics at Rutgers University, said, “Laptops would offer us just simple things like spell check, cut and paste, copy. It would reduce the amount of work, the amount of time, substantially,” particularly as incarcerated students previously had to write every draft of every paper by hand. Students also have to pay for each sheet of paper. 

Victoria Kuhn, New Jersey’s DOC commissioner, said the donation is “more than the physical laptops,” because the equipment also offers “hope and confidence and a sense of equity and encouragement for our students.” 

Jill Stockwell *17, former director of PTI, served as the event emcee. Aside from a year-long break to pursue a Fulbright fellowship, she has been with the program since she was a Ph.D. student at Princeton, but her last day at the University was just two days after the event. PTI is currently searching for its next director. 

“This focus on digital literacy was in direct response to the overwhelming feedback from all of our summer interns,” said Stockwell, referencing the three internship opportunities Princeton offers PTI students, “that the most valuable element of the summer, regardless of the focus of their internship, be it the humanities, social sciences, or a STEM field, was in the computer skills that they learned and the overall comfort with technology.” 

PTI works in conjunction with other local colleges as part of the NJ-STEP (Scholarship and Transformative Education in Prisons) consortium. The association, which also includes Drew University, Raritan Valley Community College, and Rutgers University, works with New Jersey’s DOC and State Parole Board to provide courses to incarcerated students. Princeton, through PTI, provides faculty instructors. 

According to Chris Agans, executive director of NJ-STEP, education for incarcerated students benefits society by providing “increased public safety, revitalized communities, intergenerational degree attainment, skilled labor, improved earnings, wealth production, creative solutions, and an overall reduction in the immediate and collateral costs of crime in prison.”