LOCKHART, Texas — Incarcerated women at the Lockhart Correctional Facility have been working toward earning their high school degrees through the Goodwill Excel Center. On June 23, 62 of them became graduates.
For Ivory Heister, a woman who ran away from home at 15 and wasn’t able to complete her high school education, this graduation meant everything.
"I felt victory, for once in my life,” Heister said. “I felt like I did it."
Heister's mom said it's been a long road for her daughter to get here.
"I really felt like she wasn't going to probably live to see even 20, just the things she was doing were so dangerous,” Amanda Heister said.
Ivory Heister's parents have only seen her once in the past six years. But to see her turning her life around through education meant everything to them.
“Proudest moment in years,” Amanda Heister said.
The Goodwill Excel Center has three campuses at correctional facilities including the Billy Moore Correctional Center, the Coleman Unit for Women in Lockhart and the Diboll Correctional Center. The program lets students finish the courses they need to graduate high school. They can also get specific certifications in culinary, construction or business office management that will help them find a job once they are released from prison.
"The likelihood of them recidivating is significantly lower when they have that education while they're incarcerated,” said Theresa Rappaport, superintendent of the Goodwill Excel Center.
There’s a 43% reduction in the rates that a convicted criminal will repeat offend if they participate in education programs like the Excel Center, according to a study by Northwestern University. That number goes down the higher the degree gets: it’s 14% for those with an associate degree, 5.6% for a bachelor’s degree and 0% for a master’s degree.
Ivory Heister has plans of going to college and creating a new life, and she credits this program with giving her the skills to do that.
"Now that I've graduated, I feel like the sky is not even the limit, it's just what I'm going to step on to become the great woman I'm going to be,” she said. “Just accomplishing things I never thought possible, it makes me feel like I can do anything."
It was a day students got to celebrate their growth and success.
“So many of them have been having conversations about mistakes they've made in the past and that seems to follow them around. And so, to see them get to celebrate something that they've done that they can be really proud of is also just really rewarding to witness,” Rappaport said.