PrisonEd Foundation
The PrisonEd Foundation provides noncredit job-prep and college-prep correspondence courses to Utah prisoners.
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Worked with more than 1,600 Prisoners
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Responded to more than 7,500 letters
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More than 2,200 course certificates of achievement issued
Books and services are provided without charge. Communication is through the U.S. Mail. Tutors provide responses to student assignments.
We have become acquainted with unimaginable wreckage of lives. Yet, in the darkness of the abyss, we have found prisoners who have discovered a glimmer of hope and became involved in the process of becoming new men and women.
Voices From Prison: The Making Of Ascenders
In July of 2024, Don Wright published the book Voices From Prison: The Making of Ascenders.
Primarily, it tells the stories of several dozen PrisonEd students. The prisoners give insight into the background that brought them to prison.
Most acknowledge the warehousing of prison – an environment of discouragement and mostly hopelessness. However, there are prisoners who use prison-time to rise above the rubble of their lives and become Ascenders.
Close to two million Americans are incarcerated. Ninety-five percent will return to society to intermingle with us on our streets, in our parks and grocery stores. We have a choice whether they return as convicts or Ascenders.
Voices from Prison: The Making of Ascenders tells the upward journey of prisoners.
The prisoner quotations on this website are from the book, now available from Amazon for $9.95.
“The prisoners around me are like books
Ready to tell a story. Some are wide open;
others are closed tight –
Even with locks guarding their content.
Beyond these covers lie stories needing to be told.
Some have found Themselves.
Some aren’t looking.
A few like me –
Ready for the Bookmaster to rebind!”
