Virginia Prisoners Stuck Waiting for Education Programs
On November 10, 2025, the Joint Legislative Audit and Review Commission (JLARC) of the Commonwealth of Virginia released a report detailing the long wait prisoners can expect when trying to participate in educational programming in the state’s Department of Corrections (DOC) and the impacts such delays have on prisoner outcomes.
The report notes that participation in educational programming reduces recidivism and increases post-release wages. Using the DOC’s COMPAS assessment tool, about “9,200 (40%) of DOC’s roughly 22,700 state-responsible inmates had been determined to have a ‘probable’ or ‘highly probable’ need for educational or vocational programs to reduce their risk of reoffending.” But barriers exist to providing adequate programming opportunities. The most pressing problem is having too few guards to meet the security needs of the DOC’s population.
“Consistent programming requires enough correctional officers (COs) to manage inmate movement to and from classrooms, prevent the unsafe use of or access to certain classroom equipment, and de-escalate conflicts arising in classrooms,” wrote the Commission. However, the DOC has “1,534 vacancies as of July 2025,” and some facilities have guard vacancies of “more than 30%.” Insufficient personnel or security incidents—like the prisoner attacks on several Wallens Ridge State Prison guards in 2025—can lead to punitive actions by prison staff, resulting in cancelled classes.
According to the report, “[a]bout a third of DOC inmates (7,539) lack a high school credential,” significantly increasing their risk for joblessness, homelessness, and recidivism. Yet, because of the lack of adequate resources to support even this basic education, only about half of the qualifying prisoners even attend GED classes, with the rest languishing on wait lists.
“Virginia currently allocates $36.8 million to adult basic education, [career and technical education], and postsecondary education programs, which make up 2% of DOC’s $1.56 billion total budget,” the Commission wrote.
House Bill 2158, put forward by state Delegate Betsy Carr (D-Richmond), aimed to strengthen carceral education from basic literacy through post-secondary programs. Though this bill was ultimately vetoed by then-Gov. Glenn Youngkin (R), several state agencies are developing plans to increase educational programming despite the setback.
“We’re really excited about it, to be able to sit around the table and kind of noodle and do the math over how we fix some of the things that were referred to today, but in fact, it really requires some very pragmatic sitting around the table and figuring stuff out,” said Terri Erwin, director of the Virginia Consensus for Higher Education in Prison—an initiative of the Virginia Interfaith Center for Public Policy. “We feel like it’s actually a very ripe time for legislators, there’s a lot of really good will towards expansion of educational opportunity, post-secondary and generally, to build that pipeline … with the ABE [Adult Basic Education] and the GED, because that’s the ecosystem inside the prison.”
That’s going to be a tough problem to solve with the shortage of guards plaguing not only Virginia’s DOC but nearly every state prison system across the country.
Sources: Virginia Mercury, Virginia’s Correctional Education Programs by JLARC (2025)
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