Correspondence Course Hustle — Higher Education from a Cell

For most people, the idea of college brings to mind lecture halls, laptops, and late-night study sessions. But for incarcerated women—especially survivors of trafficking and violence—higher education looks very different. It’s not about campus tours or dorm life. It’s about handwritten essays, 37-page packets, weeks of waiting for feedback, and figuring out how to pay for a textbook with commissary wages. In this second post of our six-part series, we follow Cassandra’s journey through a prison-based paralegal course—one she tackled without internet, support, or even reliable mail service. What she endured wasn’t just a course load—it was a test of endurance. And like so many women behind bars, she turned that hustle into hope.