Kiesha Johnson shook her foot as she waited on stage in a Portland State University ballroom in late March, eager to speak with the dozens of people who’d come to learn about the university’s efforts to help formerly incarcerated students.
“I’m not supposed to be here,” she began.
Less than two years ago, Johnson was in prison, serving a life sentence. Today, having received a commutation from former Gov. Kate Brown, she is a full-time student at Portland State.
Johnson, 50, was among the first to enroll in a college class at Coffee Creek Correctional Facility in 2019, when Portland State started offering higher education courses for women incarcerated there. She’s also among the first to enroll at the university full-time through Portland State University’s Project Rebound, a budding effort to help students continue their higher education after their release.
The university has increased its coursework at the women’s prison in Wilsonville over the last several years, thanks to work spearheaded by professor and former criminal defense attorney Deborah Arthur. Now, Arthur’s team is moving to expand those efforts into a formal support system to help formerly incarcerated students continue their studies at Portland State.
“Higher ed in prison is not just about dropping content in a prison,” Arthur said at the event where Johnson spoke. “It’s about supporting the whole student and helping them have access and find those jobs and have a future.”
Portland State’s Project Rebound is modeled after a program by the same name in California. It aims to provide formerly incarcerated students the resources, academic help and support system they need to build a new future. The program also creates a network for formerly incarcerated students to help one another ease into post-prison life.
Backers say Rebound is a public safety effort, helping students build new opportunities so they don’t return to crime. California’s Rebound program, which has enrolled over 500 students in the past six years, boasts a recidivism rate of less than 1%.
As the program gains traction in Portland, lawmakers in Salem are considering a bill that would establish similar programs at other public colleges around the state.
Education didn’t come easy to Johnson, who grew up in Oakland and left high school as a senior. But sticking with it has given her new opportunities and renewed confidence.
In 2003, Johnson was sentenced to life in prison for the fatal shooting of a 34-year-old Salem woman in a drug deal gone wrong. Johnson didn’t pull the trigger, court records show, but was with the man who did.
“As a former inmate, you already have all the strikes against you. I have a few extra ones for being an ex-felon, for being on parole, being Black and being a woman,” Johnson said. “I cannot let an extra one – not being educated – be against me.”
DEARTH OF PRISON EDUCATION
Arthur was teaching at MacLarenYouth Correctional Facility in Woodburn eight years ago when she discovered that, unlike many men’s prisons, Coffee Creek, Oregon’s only women’s prison, had no higher education pathway. Portland Community College offered some basic education and GED courses, Arthur said, but until she helped start classes at the facility in 2019, women’s post-secondary education opportunities were severely limited.
Johnson was one of 20 students who enrolled in Arthur’s first class, a year-long, 15-credit interdisciplinary course focused on the theme of metamorphosis. But she nearly quit, convinced she couldn’t cut it.
When Johnson got to Coffee Creek at age 31, she said, she was “angry as hell.”
For her first years in prison, she felt defeated. Johnson was frequently disciplined because she had a short temper and lashed out if people were in her space, she said.
Her family spurred her to change. Johnson couldn’t see her two children if she was in trouble, she said, and she didn’t want to fail them.
“They say if you’ve got one parent in, your children follow your footsteps,” Johnson said. “The motivation really came from just showing my children that you don’t have to be a product of what failure looks like.”
Johnson enrolled in GED classes and finished what she’d started in high school. She began writing a book, took the miscellaneous classes in Microsoft software and computer-aided design and, alongside other incarcerated women, advocated for higher education inside the prison.
When she joined Arthur’s first class, Johnson felt out of her depth, convinced that other inmates and the Portland State students taking the class had more experience. But when she told Arthur she planned to quit, the professor made time to tutor Johnson outside of class, coaching her through challenges like where to place her periods and quotation marks.
“I was like, ‘Okay, somebody believes I can really do this.’ I’m going to keep pushing for it,” Johnson said. “I cannot let my fear define me.”
When Johnson applied to Brown for commutation, Arthur wrote her a letter of recommendation, and court documents show that a daughter of the shooting victim also supported Johnson’s release. After Brown ended Johnson’s sentence, the professor joined Johnson’s family to pick her up at the prison gates.
Johnson and her attorney maintained during her trial that she thought she and the gunman were going to the 34-year-old Salem woman’s home to buy drugs and she had no idea he would rob anyone or fire a gun, let alone kill someone. Gunman Andre Johnson, who testified against her as part of a plea deal and who is not related to Kiesha Johnson, said she helped him plan the robbery. According to the Associated Press at the time, the prosecutor argued that since Kiesha Johnson helped the gunman after the shooting, she was guilty of the murder under Oregon law.
Brown highlighted Johnson’s case in a talk she gave at Princeton University last year, saying Johnson had been transformed in prison and was worthy of redemption. She noted that Johnson, who is Black, had been convicted by an all white jury.
In a call with Johnson’s family, Brown said she was “horrified” by how Johnson was treated by the criminal justice system and apologized for the racism and sexism that Brown said contributed to her case.
Johnson was released in 2021 and spent time with relatives in Texas before returning to Portland last year. With the help of Arthur and the Project Rebound team, she started classes in the winter and just finished her first term working toward a liberal studies degree. Her children are proud to see her in college, Johnson said.
“I just keep pushing forward with education. I’m 50. I hate that I started late in life, but I guess it’s never too late,” Johnson said.
Lisa Guirsch holds a backpack full of her new project Rebound supplies, including a laptop for class, alongside the Higher Education in Prison Program college navigator Nahlee Suvanvej.Courtesy Rachel Guirsh
REBOUND GAINS MOMENTUM
It’s impossible to say how many formerly incarcerated students have come through Portland State, because the school doesn’t ask.
But Sam Wilson knows they’re there. He’s one.
Wilson, a Portland State English major, started as the part-time Project Rebound coordinator in November after making the prison-to-college transition himself. He transferred to Portland State in 2017 after serving a 10-year sentence for a fatal DUI he committed as a teen.
Portland State didn’t have a resource program for formerly incarcerated students when Wilson enrolled. Still, students found one another, Wilson said, and developed a patchwork support network for helping each other through challenges – often with technology – like how to use Google Docs or the campus system for turning in homework.
Students who leave prison carry the trauma of incarceration, Wilson said. When they get out, the world can seem to be moving at a different pace. Technology is a hurdle and stimuli are everywhere. His job is to help students navigate that.
“There’s no way you can prepare,” Wilson said. “If you don’t have someone to hug you and say ‘Take a deep breath, this is going to be okay, you know how to do this, you did school inside.’... then life is going to push education away.”
He and the small team of professionals and students who make Rebound run are a full-service pit crew and cheerleading squad. College Navigator Nahlee Suvanvej helps get paperwork squared away for students who largely rely on federal Pell grants and other financial aid dollars available to all students. Rebound gives students a new laptop, shoes, backpacks and clothes. And Rebound students who are living through the transition help new students find their footing.
Five women have enrolled through Project Rebound this year, and Arthur expects that number to increase to eight over the spring.
Rachel Guirsch was the first. She started in the fall, just three days after finishing a multi-year prison sentence for setting a fire that police said risked the lives of two people experiencing homelessness. Guirsch told police at the time, and says today, that nobody was inside the makeshift shelter that caught on fire.
Arthur met Guirsch at the MAX tracks when she got to campus, walked her to class and introduced her to her professors. Rebound gave Guirsch a backpack, a new laptop, necessities like sunscreen and a water bottle and a silverware set that gave Guirsch immense comfort after spending several years in prison responsible for keeping track of her own fork and spoon.
Suvanvej took Guirsch on a tour around campus that first day, showing her the resource center where she could get food and personal necessities and the campus bowling alley.
“Everywhere we went, I would be like ‘Oh, wow, look at this. Look at this,’” Guirsch remembers.
“This is yours. This is your place. This is where you belong,” Suvanvej replied.
A key tenet of Project Rebound is that current students help support new arrivals, Arthur said. Rachel Guirsch helped pave the way for her wife, Lisa Guirsch, who started at Portland State two weeks later after ending her sentence for burglary. Both women and Johnson now work with Rebound, earning stipends to run and expand the program.
“If you change one person’s life by helping them get their GED or their college degree, it changes the lives of their kids, then changes the lives of their kids and then their kids, and maybe makes the world a better place,” Lisa Guirsch said.
Portland State’s efforts are modeled after California’s Project Rebound, which has operated at San Francisco State University for more than 50 years and in the last decade expanded to several other campuses. The state invests a few million dollars in Project Rebound programs each year.
The majority of the 566 students that California has served are first-generation college students and students of color, the agency’s annual report says. Some 86% of Rebound Scholars have stayed in good academic standing and the average student GPA is close to 3.0.
Wilson is eager for Portland State’s program to provide more of the resources some California campuses offer, perhaps even offering housing in the future.
Rebound currently runs on a $25,000 budget from grants and donations, Arthur said. Wilson is only part-time and doesn’t receive benefits. A partnership with Campus Compact of Oregon gives AmeriCorps stipends to Rebound students, including Johnson and others who are helping to build the program that’s supporting them.
While Arthur thinks she can keep scraping up grant money to fund current efforts, she’d like to see Portland State fund Wilson’s position full-time.
“Having it be so touch-and-go is really a detriment to the students,” Arthur said.
Alex Sager, director of PSU’s University Studies program that oversees prison-related higher ed, has put in a request to fund Wilson full-time. But next year’s funding levels are still up in the air as Portland State deals with a bleak budget and enrollment picture. The program also plans to hire a full-time higher education in prison coordinator to oversee its broader efforts at Coffee Creek, but that position is caught up in a university-wide hiring freeze.
Rachel Guirsch poses with professor Deb Arthur at “Viking Days,” Portland State’s annual back-to-school event on her first day on campus. Guirsch wore a borrowed shirt and her prison shorts for that first day of class. She’d only been out of prison for three days and hadn’t had time to find a new wardrobe.Courtesy Rachel Guirsch
ADDRESSING SAFETY CONCERNS
By definition, all of Rebound’s participants have criminal records and in some cases multiple felonies. Arthur has fielded concerns that drawing formerly incarcerated students to campus could threaten campus safety. Participating students argue the opposite is true.
“We have already been in the process of changing our lives, and so now we are actually positive members of the community that contribute,” Lisa Guirsch said.
Portland State has an easily accessible campus in the middle of a big city, so people with a variety of criminal convictions can already visit campus or enroll, Arthur said. Supporting formerly incarcerated students and giving them the resources they need to get through college is a tool to keep them from returning to crime, she said.
“You can’t have one foot in the criminal world and one foot in college. There’s not time,” said Rachel Guirsch.
Rebound does plan to adopt some of the guardrails California has imposed. If a person convicted of a sex crime in California wants to participate in Rebound, Arthur said, they’re asked to report to campus public safety and Rebound officials connect with their parole and probation officers, she said.
“Everyone wants to make sure that everyone is safe,” Arthur said.
Portland State Project Rebound team members surround Nadine Smith, third from the left, when she visited campus last week to start the process of enrolling at Portland State University, just hours after leaving prison in Coffee Creek.Photo Courtesy Deb Arthur.
‘THIS IS WHY THIS WORK MATTERS’
Nadine Smith, who knew Arthur from college classes she took in her short stint at Coffee Creek, called the professor on her drive home from prison last week.
Smith had just been released after serving seven months for theft and possession of a stolen motor vehicle. She wanted to start toward her degree.
Arthur, who hadn’t been expecting Smith’s call first-thing on a Wednesday, rallied the team. They met Smith on campus an hour later.
Smith could have gone straight home from prison or taken a few days to relax before calling Arthur. But some gut feeling urged her to plant a solid foundation right away.
“I’m so glad that I did. I feel like it set me up for an amazing foundation,” Smith said. “I couldn’t have felt any more welcomed home than they made me feel.”
The Rebound staff helped Smith get started with paperwork she needed to finish her college registration and gave her a backpack of school supplies and personal hygiene products. Johnson and the Guirschs shared tips for post-prison life.
“Everybody was in tears,” Arthur said the next day. “This is why this work matters so much.”
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Sami Edge covers higher education for The Oregonian. You can reach her at sedge@oregonian.com or (503) 260-3430.