Speaker Welch, Pelosi Salute First Women Graduates of Restorative Program Helping Incarcerees Earn Northwestern Degrees
KEWANEE, Ill. – House Speaker Emanuel “Chris” Welch celebrated the first women to earn college degrees through the Northwestern Prison Education Program this week, joining former United States House Speaker Nancy Pelosi to honor 18 women who have used this first-of-its-kind program to take important steps to build new lives after their release.
“The individual accomplishments of these first women to graduate through the Northwestern Prison Education Program are phenomenal; they will be able to begin the next chapter of their lives as fellow alumni alongside Nobel Prize winners, Supreme Court justices, famous writers, business leaders—and one Speaker of the Illinois House who is deeply honored to stand alongside them,” Welch said. “It’s a big deal for our state too, because this program is realizing something written into our Constitution decades ago: That the objective of corrections is ‘restoring’ a person.”
Article I, Section 11 of the Constitution of the State of Illinois, which says all penalties “shall be determined both according to the seriousness of the offense and with the objective of restoring the offender to useful citizenship.” By conferring a college degree from a nationally recognized university, the Northwestern Prison Education Program is an effort to more fully realize this constitutional principle.
Funded through the state’s smart and compassionate budgets, the Northwestern Prison Education Program began in 2018, enrolling 100 students from the men’s Sheridan Correctional Facility and women’s Logan Correctional Center in Lincoln. The first cohort of men graduated in 2023. Currently, another 68 individuals are enrolled.
Welch, himself a Northwestern graduate, congratulated the first class of women to earn bachelor’s degrees through the program. Welch also introduced Speaker Emerita Nancy Pelosi, who applauded the program as proof that Illinois believes in these women and their restoration.
“When they asked me to speak, they told me to convey some wisdom, but I think I could learn some wisdom from you,” Pelosi told graduates. “When you go out there, know the power of you, it’s all about you and we believe in you.”
