‘Nothing About Us Without Us’: Victoria Scott on Reentry, Education and Being Seen
When Victoria Scott talks about reentry, she doesn't start with the day someone leaves prison. She starts with the day they arrive.
For much of her life, Scott felt like life was something that happened to her rather than something she could shape. Incarceration created a forced separation from the people, places and patterns that had defined her life. While difficult, that distance also created an opportunity to see a different future.
Today, Scott serves as Strategic Initiatives Coordinator for MIT's Educational Justice Institute, where she helps build partnerships, coordinate initiatives and expand educational opportunities for incarcerated and formerly incarcerated individuals. Earlier this year, she joined the Virginia Consensus for Higher Education in Prison's strategic planning process as a guest speaker, sharing lessons from her own educational journey and the role higher education can play in successful reentry.
Refusing to Wait for Opportunity
Early in her incarceration, Scott was told she would need to wait six years before becoming eligible for certain educational opportunities. Rather than accepting that reality, she began searching for other pathways.
She became involved in a growing network of educational programs and initiatives that challenged traditional assumptions about what learning could look like in prison. She participated virtually, using a zoom-like set up, in mixed-gender learning cohorts alongside students and professionals on the outside, served as a teaching assistant for MIT's Educational Justice Institute Inside-Out philosophy courses, became an inaugural fellow in one of the nation's first paid remote-work pilots for incarcerated individuals through the Alliance for Higher Education in Prison and worked as an Opportunity Scholar with the University of Southern Maine.
Those experiences exposed her to new ideas, new people and new possibilities. They also reinforced something she believes is essential to successful reentry and rehabilitation: people must be seen as more than the circumstances that brought them into the criminal legal system.
“First, you have to see them as people, not a number, not a file to cross your desk,” Scott said. “We are holistic beings — people who are working through trauma and correcting maladaptive behaviors oftentimes rooted in survival instincts.”
For Scott, the opportunities she pursued were possible because educators, corrections leaders and community partners chose to see her potential rather than her limitations. That experience continues to shape how she approaches her work today.
The Power of Being Seen
One of the people who helped reinforce that belief was Maine Department of Corrections Commissioner Randall Liberty.
Before they ever met, Liberty learned about Scott's work and sent her a handwritten note recognizing her accomplishments.
“Just knowing that anything that I did from behind bars could matter and that somebody in a position of power would see that and appreciate me for it meant the world to me," Scott said. "It was the fuel that kept my fire going."
Scott describes “humanization and normalization” as the foundation of Maine's approach to corrections.
“The punishment is the fact that you're not home with your family,” she explained. “That's the punishment, and that's kind of where it ends. Then, it’s time to start the healing process, take accountability and steer your own life toward the skills and habits that you’ll need to succeed.”
Rather than focusing solely on confinement, the model prioritizes personal development, accountability and preparation for life after release.
Education as an Identity Shift
Like many advocates for higher education in prison, Scott sees education as far more than a pathway to employment. Education changed the way she viewed herself.
“The whole world is born in your mind, so you can only view it through the attitudes and perspectives that you have,” she said. “Education is foundational to building critical thinking practices that allow us to project what the consequences of our actions will be, pushing us to challenge our own bias.”
Most importantly, education creates an opportunity to claim a new identity.
Instead of seeing herself through the lens of her mistakes, Scott began to see herself as someone capable of learning, growing and contributing to society. That transformation is one she believes is essential to successful reentry.
When people begin to see themselves as students, professionals and leaders, they become more capable of imagining and building a different future.
‘Nothing About Us Without Us’
As states across the country work to expand educational opportunities and improve reentry outcomes, Scott believes including formerly incarcerated people in policy discussions and program design is imperative.
“We have the lived expertise that not only guides the conversation, but also provides the embodied data elements,” she said. “This work is attached to memories, to emotional experience, to families who have suffered and to people who have triumphed in the face of adversity.”
Lived experience provides insights that statistics alone cannot capture. It reveals where systems work, where they fall short and what meaningful solutions might look like.
“Why would you not want somebody to be able to tell you exactly where it hurts so you can help cure the pain, instead of letting them suffer and potentially cause pain to others?” Scott asked. “Harm happens because people are in pain, because they were overlooked, because everyone told them what they needed instead of asking. And that's the result we're going to keep getting if we don't start asking those questions and including people in the conversation, no matter who they are.”
What Needs to Change
If we want education and reentry efforts to continue transforming lives, Scott believes systems must create more pathways for opportunity.
She points to two priorities with the potential for outsized impact:
Establishing policies that prioritize educational access for incarcerated learners.
Creating living-wage employment opportunities that allow people to build financial stability before release.
Together, she believes these changes can strengthen the entire reentry continuum by helping individuals support their families, meet financial obligations and transition more successfully into their communities.
Most importantly, they reinforce the idea that people are worth investing in.
Her journey from incarceration to professional advocate is proof of what becomes possible when people are treated with dignity, given access to education and invited to help shape the systems that affect their lives.
Because transformation is far more likely when people are given both the opportunity to grow and the belief that they can.