Special Education in Prisons

Using distance learning to improve prison education programs.

In 1996, Dr. Rose Hessmiller completed a dissertation at the University of New Mexico that would inspire the creation of Ferguson Lynch. While pursuing her PhD Rosanne was focused on exploring how emerging technology could be utilized in special education. Building on her prior career with special needs education, her focus at this time was attuned to the increasing incarceration of people with disabilities.  A review from 1978 suggested that approximately 50% of youths in correctional settings had a disability that qualified them for special ed services. Knowing the facilities were not equipped to meet the needs of special needs folks, Dr. Hessmiller embarked on improving the special education programs for those with disabilities in prisons across Arizona, California, and New Mexico. 

At the time, one of the great challenges was that educators working in rural, isolated carceral settings did not have experience working with special needs populations. Dr. Hessmiller formed a plan to prioritize distance learning for the current educators, equipping them with resources to better support incarcerated individuals. She then sought permission to implement the program from various government stakeholders, as well as wardens in the participating prisons. She attended a warden meeting in New Mexico to present her solution and assess the reaction. The overwhelming feedback from the officers validated her assessment of a lack of understanding and training in how to work with special needs individuals. 

Dr. Hessmiller hired a professor in criminal justice and special education to help create a distance learning curriculum for the correctional educators. Before the course start date, she set up electronic staff classrooms where they installed conferencing equipment and taught the participants how to use it. They also administered a survey concerning inmates with special needs to the attending correctional educators. It solicited a hierarchy of their training needs and distilled the areas of study such as: traumatic brain injury, fetal alcohol syndrome, conduct disorder, etc. This step was crucial in listening and collecting specific feedback from participants to make the course as valuable as possible. 

Dr. Hessmiller’s course successfully trained a generation of correctional educators, and impelled the New Mexico state Department of Corrections to create an administrative role overseeing correctional special education. Furthermore, the project cemented Dr. Hessmiller’s belief in IT’s role in problem-solving. This process of consulting with the involved parties to design and build a tailored, unique technological solution became the core of Ferguson Lynch’s operations and services.