Building a Campus Behind the Walls: Michigan’s Bold New Initiative for Prison Education

Shawn Tylutki is Assistant Education Manager for the Michigan Department of Corrections. Shawn is a great advocate of carceral education and a terrific companion for JPEN and the Consortium for Catholic Colleges in Prison Education. Here, she shares what innovation and creativity is being pursued in the Wolverine State:

The Michigan Department of Corrections is in the final stages of the design process for the Thumb Education Center, located at a prison in Lapeer, Michigan. Ground will be broken for this new project in the spring of 2026 and the new building will be in service by the fall of 2027 to serve students at the facility. 

This new 30,000 square foot building will be solely dedicated to education, increasing the capacity at the facility, which already has one of the largest prison school buildings in the state. The new building, which will host post-secondary and career and technical education programming, will have roughly a dozen modern classrooms, along with a student commons, study areas, and staff areas. The building is being designed to support the use of student technology and will be flexible enough to host special events as part of the college experience, including guest speakers, workshops, and graduations. While designed to meet the custody and security requirements of a prison, the MDOC visited several of their partner colleges and universities to develop a vision for the center that more closely replicates main campus educational and student spaces.  

The Michigan Department of Corrections is pursuing this project, which has the support of the state legislature, with the goal of eventually having nearly all 800 incarcerated individuals at the correctional facility simultaneously enrolled in high-quality educational programming (academic, career and technical education, post-secondary). This approach, at that scale, will allow for the facility’s mission to be centered around education, allowing for a real-world study of how education can not only change post-release outcomes, but also the correctional environment for those that live or work in that space.

The Department, along with the Michigan Consortium for Higher Education in Prison (MiCHEP) is actively working to court additional higher education partners to teach in the new educational center when it opens next year and is excited to see the tangible elements of this project begin to take shape in the coming months.

Back to newsletter >>

Would you like to donate to JPEN?

Visit the Jesuits of Central & Southern Province support page to learn more about how you can contribute.

To designate your gift to the Jesuit Prison Education Network, scroll down the webpage to "Donation information" to select a gift amount. Then scroll down to the "Designation" box, click on it, and select JPEN from the drop-down menu.