Social Security

“The vast majority of prison education programs are dependent on Pell funding,” said Amber Saddler, counsel at the SBPC. “If you’re in default, this new opportunity for prison education is closed to you.”

The lawsuit filed by the Student Borrower Protection Center (SBPC) comes on the heels of the nonprofit’s new report, finding that 100 percent of 57 incarcerated individuals part of a data study are currently in default—due to barriers in accessing Pell Grants, and the holdup of student debt relief that is currently being deliberated by the U.S. Supreme Court. Although the data subset is relatively minute, they believe the numbers are higher across…

Amajority of student loan borrowers who are incarcerated have likely defaulted on their loans and would benefit from President Biden’s debt-relief plan, a new report from the Student Borrower Protection Center argues.

The Student Borrower Protection Center (SBPC) today sued the federal government and issued a report on the student loan experience for incarcerated borrowers. In its first lawsuit against the U.S. Department of Education, SBPC is seeking to compel the production of documents under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA). The request concerns the federal government policy for writing off defaulted federal student loans of borrowers incarcerated for periods of 10 years or more.

The Student Borrower Protection Center, or SBPC, said in a lawsuit filed Tuesday that though the Education Department worked with the organization when it first asked for the records in November 2021, it has since gone silent.