Martin Gabriel is finishing up his freshman year of college. At age 56, his life hasn’t exactly gone as planned.
The Detroit native first started school 30 years ago at Laramie County Community College after getting out of the Air Force in Cheyenne.
Back then, Gabriel, who goes by “Gabe,” was 26, working part-time as a counselor for at-risk youth, a DJ and a part-time fitness coach.
He had his life in front of him until he didn’t.
In fall 1994, Gabe shot and killed 21-year-old Charles Collier III after he found the man in bed with his estranged wife. He also shot, but did not kill, his wife’s roommate and best friend, and tried to shoot his wife when his gun jammed.
Now, Gabe’s serving life in prison for his crimes.
“I lost myself in that moment,” he told Cowboy State Daily from the Wyoming Medium Correctional Institution in Torrington. “If I could go back and make it right, I would do it in a heartbeat.”
Wade Farrow, likewise, knows the cost of those emotionally charged decisions. He’s also in prison serving a 35- to 65-year sentence for second-degree murder stemming from an incident concerning his ex-girlfriend.
In 2014, Farrow, now 36, shot and killed 21-year-old Tony Hansen at an apartment in Afton after the two got into a fight.
He said the guy attacked him and the shooting was self-defense. His jury thought otherwise.
Like Gabe, Farrow had been in the Air Force and was in college in Utah at the time of his arrest.
Neither can turn back the clock but say they’re grateful to once again be back in college, even if from behind prison walls.
Second Chances
Gabe and Farrow are two of 20 male inmates earning undergraduate degrees through the University of Wyoming’s Pathways from Prison program that harnesses federal Pell grant money and private donations to give inmates access to college educations.
“It’s transformational,” Gabe said of the program. “For me, it’s a dream come true.”
Rob Colter, a senior lecturer of philosophy and religious studies at the university and head of the Department of Philosophy and Religious Studies, oversees the program.
It was initiated in 2012 by former University of Wyoming faculty member Susan Dewey, who handed over the reins to Colter when she left in 2020.
Colter had enough on his plate to keep him busy, but at the same time didn’t want to see the program die.
It’s come a long way in the last few years, he said, in that it now offers four-year degrees through UW.
At its onset, the program wasn’t affiliated with the university but rather piggybacked on a relationship between the Wyoming Department of Corrections and Eastern and Central Wyoming community colleges and offered inmates a mishmash of courses for enrichment purposes or continuing education credits if any.
Back then, it was run on a shoestring budget comprised of mostly donations from local businesses and grants. The instructors, along with university students and graduate students, were paid adjunct salaries or donated their time to teach the variety of courses.
Before leaving, Dewey tried to enter the university into the U.S. Department of Education’s Second Chance Pell Experimental Sites Initiative, a pilot program offering inmates four-year general studies degrees.
The pilot program was initiated upon the passage of new legislation by Congress in December 2020, which in part restored Pell Grants for incarcerated students, which had been eliminated under former president Bill Clinton’s administration in 1994.
Pell grants do not need to be repaid and are given to students based on financial need for up to a maximum award of $7,395, for the current calendar school year.
After two unsuccessful attempts to get into the pilot program, Colter was finally successful in 2021 and credits the groundwork laid by Dewey and the other instructors, as well as the current university leadership that is supportive of the program.
Colter launched the inaugural class of the pilot program in 2022, a cohort of 20 inmates at the Wyoming Women’s Center who just finished their sophomore year of 10 courses toward an undergraduate degree in general studies.
The following year, Gabe’s cohort of 20 inmates at the men’s medium correctional facility began their four-year program, and Colter hopes to start another cohort at the men’s maximum security prison next year.
Not Popular With Everyone
While inmates like Gabe and Farrow espouse how grateful they are to take college courses and earn their degrees, programs like Wyoming’s often also are targets by a public at large that says those resources should go to others, not reward those who commit crimes.
Drew Aldridge, certified academic manager and field public information officer for the
Wyoming Medium Correctional facility, said some people get upset when they find out the department is offering inmates educational and other opportunities.
There’s a propensity to believe that when someone goes to prison, lock them up and throw away the key, he said. But as someone working on the inside, he doesn’t see a value in that.
“They’re here as punishment, not for punishment, right?” Aldridge said. “We’re here to offer corrective behaviors, so if we have an opportunity to provide a program that’s going to correct behaviors, to me that’s the whole purpose of how this works and what we’re supposed to do.”
The goal is to provide inmates, most of whom will one day return to society, with skills and tools to grow to be better contributing members of society, he added.
Hayley Speiser, correctional education programs manager for the state, agrees.
“Our goal is to get people out of prison who aren't going to come back to us,” she said.
Even for those like Gabe who are serving life sentences, the programming goes a long way, Speiser said, in helping the community inside the prison by serving as a peer mentor for future cohorts.
“They’re still making an impact in their community on the inside as well,” she said.
While Sen. Troy McKeown, R-Gillette, appreciates the sentiment of returning people to society with skills, he objects to the tax dollars of middle-class people being used to educate those who have committed capital crimes.
“Right now, parents and kids are having problems paying for college,” he said, noting that although everyone is eligible for funding based on income, it’s the middle-class who pays for it in the end.
He likens it to Medicaid expansion which, on its face, he said is a good idea.
“I think everybody should have health care,” he said. “The problem is the people who work hardest in this country are in the middle band. They make too much money to qualify for Medicaid expansion, so they pay for the people who don't make enough money to get health insurance.”
At the end of the day, he said he’s a “staunch conservative” who believes people should keep their money.
“We’ve become too benevolent,” he said.
No DEI, Gender Studies
Other legislators have concerns about what is being taught in the program, though otherwise support it.
On its face, Rep. John Bear, R-Gillette, agrees with the premise of providing inmates with the necessary skills and education to help them be successful outside of prison, especially if it reduces recidivism rates as many studies show it does.
A January 2023 study from Mackinac Center for public policy states that any form of educational program decreases the rate of recidivism by 14.8%. This figure increases with education level with nearly 28% of those inmates earning a bachelor’s degree do not reoffend.
In terms of overall annual cost savings, the study shows that for every dollar spent on inmate training and education in 2022 yielded up to a $3.10 savings depending on degree.
However, Bear does not want to see the educational funding taken from other students, nor does he agree with the university’s diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) initiatives or the teaching of gender studies to inmates.
“Those programs are not effective in creating opportunities for felons to get gainful employment when they leave prison,” he said.
The university’s DEI program was a target of Wyoming legislators this past session with the body voting in favor of cutting $1.7 million to the school’s diversity program. In response, UW President Ed Seidel and the board of trustees announced they’re eliminating its DEI office while maintaining diversity programs that serve students.
As for inmates taking gender studies programs under the new degree program, Colter said those classes had been offered in the past before the university took it over, but so far none have been offered to the two cohorts.
Colter also said that no opportunities are being taken away from Wyoming students in that the grants are available to anyone who meets the economic threshold and that instructors teach the prison courses in addition to, not instead of, their regular teaching loads.
“The program takes away no opportunities from non-incarcerated students,” Colter said.
Apart from the inmates enjoying the opportunity, Colter sees a “massive return” on investment for the university and state.
“Part of the university’s job description is service to the state,” he said. “I think this is maybe the best bang for the buck of all the things we do to serve.”
Feds Should Stay In Their Lane
Rep. Jeremy Haroldson, R-Wheatland, had not heard of the program prior to Friday, but upon introduction, said the only problem he sees with it is that it’s funded by the federal government.
“I struggle anytime the government gets out of its lane,” he said. “So when the government starts funding education, it’s out of its lane.”
That said, the fact is that the government does fund higher education, he conceded, and as such believes providing opportunities for inmates to find a future is a good idea.
He also said he’s in favor of including inmates in the eligibility of Pell grant funding given the role of the judiciary system in rehabilitating inmates so they don’t reoffend.
“The goal is to help people find a new way of life, to help them course correct,” he said. “Obviously, they made some dumb decisions to get there, so how do we help them not continue down those paths in the future?”
He sees education also as helping build an inmate’s self-worth and identity, two areas he believes likely led to their crimes in the first place.
“I think that we should offer people the opportunity to make their lives better, and ultimately to get out of the system, because we don’t want them in the system that’s costing taxpayers money. If they’re in the system, they’re a burden on society,” he said. “If we can find a way to help them recover and not do the same foolish thing that brought them here in the first place, then it’s a win for both sides.”
Second Chances
The inmates are grateful for the opportunity, Colter said, which is part of what makes teaching them so rewarding for he and others.
Perhaps the greatest indicator of its value is the number of inmates who applied for the 20 slots, Colter said. In Lusk, 35 women applied with that number topping nearly 50 for male inmates in Torrington.
Choosing the 20 was an arduous several-day process of in-person interviews. It was a hard decision to whittle them down, Colter said, and the fact that they were chosen shows in their commitment. To date, Colter hasn’t seen lower than a B grade for anyone.
He also said that both Gabe and Farrow are top-notch students, with Farrow being perhaps in the top five most gifted students he’s ever taught.
“It's not lost on them that this is pretty special, and they tend to work accordingly,” Colter said.
Instructors Gain, Too
Dan Fetsco, a faculty member of the Criminal Justice Program at the University of Wyoming, also teaches in the program.
Though he’s taught courses in the past, this spring was his first term teaching criminology to the men in Torrington.
Like the other instructors, he derives a lot of satisfaction out of teaching this particular population.
“I learned as much from the men as they learned from me,” he said, “which is not always the case when I'm teaching a group of 18- and 19-year-old freshmen.”
He, too, sees the value in educating inmates. He’s seen the law from all angles as a former public defender, Carbon County prosecutor and as executive director for the Wyoming Board of Parole.
“There's a simple fact about the prison system in America: 95% of the people in prison are getting out someday, meaning they're coming home. The question is, how do we want them coming home? Hopefully wiser,” he said.
More so for Fetsco, the experience confirmed what he said he already knew: most people in prison have talents and are capable of redemption.
Tiger Robison, an associate professor of music education at UW, agreed. He was recruited to teach in the program after meeting Dewey in a writing group.
He said he’s fortunate because he gets to teach both childhood music education and inmates, two groups for whom he believes education can be transformational.
Sense Of Hope
For the inmates, the experience has been life-changing in a multitude of ways. Prior to prison, Farrow said his goals were much more materialistic in terms of being financially successful whereas now he wants to find a purpose much larger than himself, whether that be educating others or serving the community in some way.
Gabe also feels the need to atone for his crimes by doing whatever he can to be a positive role model for others. Apart from the learning, he the program has brought them all together. Instead of just worrying about their own successful, the inmates are pulling together to help one another rout and make sure nobody fails or falls behind.
The program has been life changing for them in many ways, Gabe said.
“It just allows me to have a better sense of hope,” he said.
Jen Kocher can be reached at jen@cowboystatedaily.com.
