Cal State LA’s Prison Graduation Initiative graduates first women’s cohort, opening new paths at California Institution for Women

Cal State LA's Prison Graduation Initiative (PGI) was well grounded by the time the university introduced the program to the California Institution for Women (CIW) in Chino in 2022.

PGI, the state's first in-person bachelor's degree completion program for incarcerated students, had by then graduated more than 40 students from its initial two cohorts at the California State Prison, Los Angeles County in Lancaster. However, transferring the valuable lessons learned from six years working with male students at Lancaster was not enough to guarantee success at CIW. It was not a simple cut-and-paste situation.

Cal State LA's faculty and staff quickly learned that CIW's female student population faced unique situations that hindered the women's ability to complete their education if they were to parole before earning their Bachelor of Arts in Liberal Studies. PGI addressed the various issues with an internal mandate: ensure CIW's students graduated in two years.

On Friday, Oct. 3, PGI accomplished its mission as the inaugural cohort of 23 graduates from CIW celebrated to loud and enthusiastic cheers from about 300 family members and friends during the Commencement ceremony at the CIW campus.

"It's amazing. This is the biggest accomplishment of my life," said graduate Leticia Montoya. "I didn't graduate high school; I got a GED. I thought that's it for me. Higher education was never in the plan, it wasn't valued in my household."

Montoya was one of two student speakers at the ceremony. Commencement day also happened to coincide with her 48th birthday.

Keynote speaker Billie Jean King provided Montoya and her fellow graduates with words of encouragement.

"Never stop learning and never stop learning how to learn. Be a problem solver and an innovator. Only you graduates truly understand what it took to earn this degree. Only you… Keep believing in yourself, keep dreaming, and keep going for it," said King, the beloved Cal State LA alumna, sports icon, and equality champion.

According to criminal-reform nonprofit Vera Institute of Justice, the number of incarcerated women nationally who earn their bachelor's degree on a yearly basis range from seven to 22. CIW's inaugural cohort exceeded that top number by one.

"This historic accomplishment is a testament to our students' commitment to higher education, as well as the innovation of PGI," said Cal State LA President Berenecea Johnson Eanes. "PGI is groundbreaking. We continue to be committed to you and to this community. When our new graduates and alumni are ready to find employment and seek out community, Cal State LA will continue to have your back.

"The anemic national graduation numbers could be attributed to several factors, including the limited number of bachelor's degrees offered at women's prisons across the country. Many prisons offer only vocational courses such as secretarial or culinary training, according to PGI Director Bidhan Roy.

In the 2022 on-ramp year before classes began a year later, PGI conducted interviews with CIW students and discovered additional barriers that could prohibit the women from completing their degrees should they parole early.

Most women upon release instantly return to their roles as heads of household, which likely means they would choose to find employment and provide for their children instead of completing their coursework. Fifty-eight percent of incarcerated women are mothers.

"They would have to provide childcare and take care of other familial concerns," Roy said. "They worried they wouldn't be able to complete their degrees once they were outside. We never heard that from the men."

Also, the women who parole to counties outside of Southern California would not be able to complete their degrees in-person at Cal State LA. California has only two prisons for women, CIW and the Central California Women's Facility in Chowchilla, and the law requires that parolees be returned to their last legal residence before their incarceration, which could be hundreds of miles from Los Angeles.

In contrast, male students from Lancaster and the California Institution for Men in Chino, the third facility where PGI is offered, are likely to parole in Los Angeles County or neighboring counties, giving them easy access to the Cal State LA campus.

Additionally, women typically receive shorter sentences than men for comparable crimes. According to the research institute California Policy Lab, the average sentence for men in California from 2014 to 2024 was 6.9 years compared to 4.4 years for women, which factored into PGI's accelerated timeline for graduation.

"We couldn't guarantee that we could help them finish if they paroled early," said Roy. "We changed our graduation roadmap so they would finish in five consecutive terms-the fastest in the country-not because we wanted to rush but because they expressed these concerns. It is our ethical responsibility to make sure they complete their credentials."

The student interviews held during the 2022 on-ramp year, which allowed the students to complete their lower-division courses, also helped determine the Liberal Studies degree that would be offered to the students.

"In general, with prison education, we balance certain factors that are different for students on the outside," Roy said. "Because our program is cohorted, we have to allow for a breadth of interests. The students don't get to choose their degrees, but the Liberal Studies degree offers a broad range of classes that gives us the flexibility to tailor it to the cohort's expressed interests."

When queried about their career goals, the students provided a wide variety of answers, including law, education, social work, the arts, and the tech sector. The Department of Liberal Studies, led by Chair Michael Willard, tailored the degree to the students' needs and reimagined it as a flexible "Applied and Professional Humanities" option that places emphasis on careers, critical-thinking, communications, soft skills, and marketability in a competitive labor market.

The university's Center for Effective Teaching and Learning trained faculty to create career-engaged curriculums. PGI, the Career Center, and the Department of Liberal Studies created an academic and career support program that helped students develop individual career goals.

"The Liberal Studies Department was very responsive and open to changing its degree to fit the needs of the students at CIW," said Roy. "The department created a very career-focused degree, which allowed us to pull from other departments within course clusters that give us both a coherent but flexible degree that really fits the needs of the cohort at that particular time."

PGI currently offers bachelor's degrees at CIW, CIM, and Lancaster. It will add a fourth institution, the San Quentin Rehabilitation Center in the San Francisco Bay Area, in the summer of 2026. San Quentin is scheduled to be the first institution in the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation system to operate under the California Model, which emphasizes rehabilitation, education, and reentry.

PGI has graduated 72 students, including 20 parolees who completed their coursework at Cal State LA. To date, the recidivism rate of its students stands at 0%.

Nikki Carroll was paroled from CIW in December 2023. She attended Cal State LA's Commencement in May 2025 and returned to CIW to walk across the stage a second time. She said the CIW ceremony held more significance to her.

"I was reunited with my sisters," she said. "We started this journey together and we completed it together. We did it."

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California State University, Los Angeles is the premier comprehensive public university in the heart of Los Angeles. Cal State LA is ranked number one in the United States for the upward mobility of its students. Cal State LA is dedicated to engagement, service, and the public good, offering nationally recognized programs in science, the arts, business, criminal justice, engineering, nursing, education, and the humanities. Founded in 1947, the University serves more than 22,000 students and has more than 270,000 distinguished alumni.