William Peeples spent 13 years on death row before having his sentence commuted in 2003 to life without parole. Since joining the Northwestern Prison Education Program, Peeples has had the chance to study scholars like Karl Marx and Kimberlé Crenshaw, and won the inaugural Janice Nora Lackey Award for Academic Excellence at Stateville Correctional Center.
While many schools will offer classes for credit to prison inmates, Northwestern University says its the only top 10 school that grants degrees to prisoners. And next spring, students at Stateville Correctional Center, a maximum-security prison in Will County, will be the first to receive their bachelor's degrees from Northwestern while in prison.