Why Prison Education Programs Need Real-Time Human Feedback October 5, 2026 The Last Mile strengthens prison education programs using secure technology, responsive academic support, and professionals who help students. Here’s the impact: By Robert Roche, VP of Marketing at The Last Mile. Prison education programs hold an extraordinary promise: the opportunity for individuals to create a better future from inside prison walls. Keeping that promise takes consistent teaching, feedback, and human connection. At The Last Mile, we have built those relationships into the technology that delivers our education. The Fundamental Flaw in Learning Alone Across the United States, prisons are introducing educational tablets to help residents develop skills for life after release. These tablets provide self-paced modules and give students opportunities to study and revisit material at any time. The educational information may be accurate and beneficial, yet those modules offer no live instruction or human feedback. On these systems, prison residents must navigate confusion and knowledge gaps alone. A recorded lesson cannot ask why a student chose an answer. Simply replaying the same explanation may not address the underlying misunderstanding. Without someone to intervene, a small gap in understanding can follow a student through every assignment that comes next. The barriers extend across correctional education. A 2023 Ithaka S+R survey found that 32% of responding prison higher education programs lacked access to faculty video conferencing. For someone desperate to build a better future, an unanswered question can carry enormous weight. Confusion can even feel like evidence that they do not belong in the classroom. Correctional systems must take responsibility for what happens after individuals open the lesson. We should expect prison education programs to provide consistent access to resources and support that help individuals learn effectively. The Service That Keeps Learning Moving The Last Mile provides a service that deserves far more attention: live, ongoing help with students’ classwork. Using TLM-approved devices, students can reach our Academic Success team beyond scheduled instruction. Our secure learning platform, PORTAL, connects them with professionals who can explain concepts, troubleshoot problems, and help them make progress. That connection changes the learning experience inside prison. A student can describe what went wrong, share their thought process, and collaborate with someone who understands to determine the next steps. Each exchange gives the student another opportunity to try, revise, and understand. “We are here to support the students throughout their learning journey,” explains Paolo Bognot, Academic Success Manager at The Last Mile. Especially for someone starting a skill like coding with little technical experience, that support can make an intimidating assignment feel possible. Questions receive rapid attention. With help, frustration becomes something a student can work through. Regular access to skilled educators should be a basic expectation wherever we claim to offer rehabilitation. Unfortunately, a learning environment like this is all too rare in prisons across our country. A San Quentin student builds technical skills through The Last Mile’s secure technology, live instruction, and Academic Success support. The Technology That Prison Education Programs Need At The Last Mile, live instruction is the bedrock of our work. Our technology connects qualified instructors with prison classrooms across state lines, including facilities far from major population centers. An instructor can ask a follow-up question, explain an unfamiliar concept, and respond to the students in front of them. Geographic isolation becomes a problem our infrastructure can help solve. For more than a decade, TLM has developed the technology that makes teaching difficult skills like coding inside prisons possible. Our PORTAL platform provides live instruction, coursework, assessments, and communication in a secure learning environment designed specifically for prisons. Our reported alumni outcomes include approximately 75% employment and 8% recidivism. These figures reflect a broader model that connects education, academic support, and reentry services. We are now opening that infrastructure to other educational organizations. Platform partners are piloting their programming at San Quentin Rehabilitation Center, with wider expansion planned. Each organization can bring its expertise into prison classrooms using existing technology TLM has already built. Correctional systems should implement it to bring more teachers, expertise, and opportunity inside. We design from experience, so we understand where the friction points are. We anticipate the frustration before the student even hits it, and we build the supports to guide them through.” Natasha Towle, Remote Instructor at The Last Mile What Happens After the Lesson Matters Independent practice allows students to discover whether they truly understand a lesson. In coding, discovery is unavoidable: the project works, fails, or behaves in ways its creator never intended. Chasity Choate, TLM Alumna and Former Teaching Assistant, recalls how overwhelming the curriculum initially felt at Oklahoma’s Mabel Bassett Correctional Facility. “Learning to code from scratch is incredibly difficult. How am I supposed to learn 10 different languages at one time?” she recalled asking herself. This feeling is familiar to our Academic Success team, most of whom are TLM Alumni themselves. They help students troubleshoot, interpret requirements, and keep learning without spending hours pursuing the wrong solution. Brevity is also key to the team’s success. In August 2026, the team closed 228 support tickets through 972 individual student interactions. Its average time to first response was 2.1 minutes. Our new PATH curriculum expands that need across digital literacy, AI, project management, sales, marketing, and entrepreneurship. As students tackle increasingly demanding work, they need room to struggle, troubleshoot, and access reliable help to learn skills designed for the modern workplace. Support Delivered By People With Lived Experience An error message rarely tells the whole story. Behind it may be linked to an unfamiliar term, a misunderstood assignment, or someone hesitant to admit they need help. “Sometimes it’s the code,” notes Bognot. “Sometimes it’s clarity, sometimes it’s confidence.” Paolo understands that classroom from personal experience. An alumnus of The Last Mile’s Web Development Fundamentals, he learned HTML, CSS, and JavaScript while incarcerated at Pelican Bay. Today, he combines his technical knowledge and an understanding of incarceration to assist the students seeking his help. Throughout TLM, colleagues with lived experience contribute to shaping instruction and support. Natasha Towle, Remote Instructor, describes the practical value: “We design from experience, so we understand where the friction points are.” The Academic Success program brings that attention to debugging, guided problem-solving, assignment feedback, and everyday encouragement. A patient explanation can keep frustration from escalating into withdrawal. These interactions also prepare students for professional life. Describing a problem, asking clear questions, and acting on feedback are essential workplace skills. Regular contact with educators outside of prison gives students a valuable opportunity to practice these skills. Paolo Bognot, The Last Mile’s Academic Success Manager, draws on technical expertise and lived experience to help students move forward. A Learning System Built For Self-Improvement The value of Academic Success continues beyond a single student’s answer. Each submission helps the team evaluate the effectiveness of our curriculum. “We know what the student built and what the student understands,” explains Bognot. Staff evaluate projects against clear requirements and provide actionable feedback. By analyzing submissions, they identify recurring misunderstandings and patterns within cohorts. These insights reach the curriculum team, remote instructors, program operations, and engineering when technical issues interfere with learning. This process creates a continuous cycle of improvement. Student work reveals a problem,educators examine the pattern, refine the lesson or support, and evaluate what happens next. The findings can inform national curriculum improvements and responses to a particular classroom’s needs. Human judgment adds context to the data: what students already know, where language creates confusion, and how prison conditions affect learning. An isolated learning system loses these crucial opportunities when nobody examines students’ experiences and acts on what they reveal. Continuousimprovement, guided byhuman experience. 1 Student work 2 Academic Success Review and feedback 3 Identify patterns Across students and classrooms 4 Refine curriculum and support 5 Deliver updated instruction 6 Evaluate new student work Meet the Learner Where They Are Chasity Choate is an alumna of TLM at Mabel Bassett Correctional Facility in Oklahoma. After completing the course, she stayed as a teaching assistant for nearly five years, helping others develop the skills she had worked to master. “Once I started the technology program, I was eating, breathing, sleeping code,” Chastity explained to us. “That’s all my mind would do. I was dreaming in code, and would wake up to try what I dreamt about.”Today, Chasity works as a data entry specialist and IT professional at PHP Commercial Painting, helping manage the company’s internal systems and digital infrastructure. Her experience shows why the person struggling today deserves our investment. With sustained opportunity, that learner can become someone others turn to for help. Bognot describes the purpose of Academic Success plainly: “Our job is to help meet the students where they are, understand what’s getting in their way, and help them take the next step forward.” Prison Education Programs Need A Human Touch A successful educational program requires a dynamic, empathetic approach. Strengths deserve recognition. Gaps in understanding require direct attention. Every student deserves support that responds to the person doing the work. Prison education programs should build that commitment into their design. Correctional leaders can invest in secure technology that connects students with instructors and professionals beyond scheduled lessons. Educational partners can assist in implementing this model into more facilities. Inside those walls, individuals are working toward a future they have never had the chance to live. We have the technology to reach them. Our responsibility is to connect them with people ready to help. By Robert Roche, VP of Marketing at The Last Mile. Want articles like this one in your inbox? Subscribe to The Last Mile Marker. This is a biweekly newsletter offering in-depth insights, critical updates, and inspiring stories on criminal justice reform and second chances.