The computer skills many workers take for granted – and most employers demand – have long been out of reach for women in New Jersey’s prison system. Now Rutgers is partnering in a new initiative designed to bridge that digital divide by preparing inmates for successful entry into the working world.

The Prison to Community Project, known as P2C, offers hundreds of incarcerated women their first comprehensive exposure to the world of computer-based learning.

The theory behind it is simple yet profound: Bring the learning to the consumer – in this case, some 350 women housed at the Edna Mahan Correctional Facility for Women in Clinton, living in an assessment center or halfway house, or serving out their parole.

New Jersey is a pioneer in the effort, said Heather A. McKay, director of the Sloan Center on Innovative Training and Workforce Development of the Rutgers Center for Women and Work and a key researcher involved in evaluating the three-year pilot program, now finishing its first year.

“Although other states use technology in their prisons, as far as I know this is one of the first that goes from prison to the community, and it’s also one of the first directed at women,” McKay said.

Completely voluntary, the program provides online training that follows an inmate from her stay behind bars to her move to halfway housing and ultimately to the next all-important step: enrolling in a community college or landing a productive job.

The Mahan Facility, the only correctional institution in the state for female inmates, has a population of about 930. The women have been convicted of a wide variety of crimes, including drug use, check fraud, assault, and murder.

Rutgers’ role in the project is to evaluate participants’ progress by analyzing such items as course completion, satisfaction with online learning, and job placement.

“The women who go through the program have a variety of needs and desires,” McKay said. “Some want to earn their GED, some want to open a small business or learn office or math skills.”

Working at Rutgers with McKay on the evaluation are Mary Murphree, senior advisor with the Sloan Center; Deborah Ward, director of evaluation research programs at the Center for Women and Work; and Mary Gatta, senior research scientist.

Participants choose among such courses as basic math, writing skills, English, and all major Microsoft Office applications: Access, Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and Outlook. While a majority of the women had used computers before they started serving their sentences, only a few said they knew how to use these more specific applications.

Essex County Community College and the Women’s Reentry Initiative for Training and Education (WRITE-NJ), an independent nonprofit organization, provide the instructors at the three correctional sites. They follow an educational model that combines “high tech” with “high touch” learning, encouraging the P2C students to develop their skills through intensive work on the computer while working together with instructors in a lab-as-classroom setting.

The participants represent a wide variety of ages, ethnic backgrounds, and education levels. A third of the women had no high school degree before their convictions. During initial sessions, inmates who had never worked on a computer expressed anxiety: They were afraid of touching the computer, using the mouse, and typing on the keyboard.

Later, many of these women, especially older ones, told the Rutgers researchers that overcoming such fears represented a major personal triumph.

With each successful course completion, participants receive a certificate that they add to a portfolio to show a prospective employer at an interview, McKay said.

In addition to working with the P2C program, the Center for Women and Work recently organized and hosted a daylong conference titled, “Raising the Bars: Technology-Based Education from Prison to Community.” Six months in the planning, it attracted more than 140 participants from the worlds of corrections, academia, and community service.

Among attendees was William Hauck, administrator at the Mahan Correctional Facility, who praised the New Jersey initiative. A Rutgers graduate who received his Certified Public Manager’s degree in 1989, Hauck said the rate of recidivism among former female inmates in New Jersey has dropped since the program was launched. He sees a strong correlation between the two factors.

“The inmates have really accepted the program wholeheartedly,” Hauck said in an interview after the conference. “It gives them another avenue for reentry into society and helps open the doors for them when they get back.”

For McKay, one of the most eloquent testimonials came from a six-year veteran of Mahan with two years still to serve: “It helps me by giving me something to look forward to,” the grateful inmate said. “It gives a lot of women here hope.”

Partners in the initiative include the Nicholson Foundation of Essex County, the project’s main funding source; Essex County Community College; the Mahan Correctional Facility; and several state agencies including the Department of Corrections, the Department of Labor and Workforce Development, and the Parole Board.