‘Education is the equalizer’

Aaron Kinzel discovered a dusty, old box while searching the property of his grandfather‘s farm in 2021. After opening it, Kinzel sifted through pictures of his immigrant German family, newspaper clippings and legal papers. One document, a divorce decree from the early 1920s, caught his attention: it said his great-great grandfather had been sent to the Ohio State Penitentiary for life and his spouse filed for a separation due to his incarceration. 

Kinzel was stunned — not only because it was a family secret, but because it gave him a new perspective on his own life.

“My childhood was like living in a horror movie. We were very poor and there was a lot of violence and abuse. My stepfather almost murdered me when I was 9,” says Kinzel, a lecturer in criminology and criminal justice. “I knew that violence was a part of my growing up, but looking at those papers, I could trace violence and incarceration in my family more than a century back. Incarceration has had a recurring role over multiple generations for my bloodline — including me.”

If Kinzel wasn’t so open about his background, you wouldn’t suspect that the award-winning educator — he’s the 2024 UM-Dearborn Faculty Awards recipient for Lecturer Excellence in Inclusive Teaching and a King-Chávez-Parks Initiative's Future Faculty Fellow— served time in prison for a violent confrontation with law enforcement as a teenager. 

He says incarceration was the culmination of run-ins with the law that began when he was young. “I was in a dark place surrounded by drug dealing and crime. Looking back, that was my rock bottom. I shot at the police. No one was physically hurt, but it still weighs heavily on me,” says Kinzel, who was paroled in 2007 after serving 10 years. “Going to prison and having time to reflect and mature is what helped me turn my life around. Now I want to work collaboratively with criminal justice professionals to make the system and society a safer place.”

Kinzel, who had dropped out of high school, says education was a catalyst in his transformation. He earned his GED while awaiting trial in a local county jail in 1997. Then, prior to his release from prison, he enrolled in several non-credit courses and eventually saved up enough money to be admitted to the University of Maine at Augusta — Kinzel served his prison sentence in Maine — for a psychology course that addressed drug use and how it influences choices, alcoholism and genetics, and brain development.

“The area of the brain that controls reasoning and helps us think before we act develops into adulthood. It was this a-ha moment for me. It will never excuse my actions and I take full responsibility, but my childhood certainly helps explain my criminal conduct. The class helped me better understand my actions and that I had the ability to grow and change,” he says.

After he was released, Kinzel earned his associate’s degree at Monroe Community College and an undergraduate degree at Siena Heights University. He then went on to earn his master’s degree from UM-Dearborn. He is currently working on his doctoral dissertation and plans to graduate with his Ed.D. from UM-Dearborn in 2025.

But, as important as education was to unlocking opportunities, Kinzel says getting into college came with significant hurdles.

“As a society, we don’t want to educate felons or hire them. I tried to get a job right out of prison, but couldn’t get hired. For college, I applied at multiple institutions. Some outright rejected me, but others noticed my growth. I ended up being the first person UM-Dearborn accepted while still on parole — and that was on a probationary status,” he says. “If the purpose of prison time is to reform offenders, we need to come up with a better path for reentry.” Kinzel hopes academic institutions will begin to expand their DEI efforts to be more inclusive for justice-impacted people. 

There are, and will continue to be, many returning citizens in positions similar to Kinzel’s, he points out. “According to numbers, 95% of the men and women in prisons will be coming home. That’s a fact. So now the question is: Who do we want as our neighbor?,” Kinzel observes. “People with skills to help them make a living and be productive members of society? Or people who are sitting around and finding themselves in desperate situations?”

Kinzel says his pivot toward education helped him build skills over time.

While at community college, he became a member of Phi Theta Kappa International Honor Society and an academic tutor on campus. As an undergrad, he gained campus employment as a newspaper staff writer and was named a Ronald E. McNair Scholar, a U.S. Department of Education program that teaches highly qualified students from underserved populations about how to apply and succeed in graduate school. He graduated from UM-Dearborn’s Masters in Public Administration program in the top 15% of his class. He also was named a UM-Dearborn Difference Maker.

Throughout his education journey, Kinzel says he gained confidence, built networks and honed skills, while also proving himself to professors and administrators. This led to instructional assistant opportunities, which began while he was an undergraduate. Then in 2015, while a graduate student, Kinzel says support came from a seemingly unlikely place: Donald Shelton, then-director of UM-Dearborn's Criminology and Criminal Justice program and a retired long-time circuit court judge.

“I helped him promote a criminal justice symposium that he was working on and I believe that I exceeded his expectations. He saw my work ethic. Getting to know each other more, I let him know my background and discussed how I was teaching a couple classes part time at Western Michigan University. He thought that with my education, professional accomplishments and personal experience that I’d be a good addition to the criminal justice faculty and encouraged me to apply,” Kinzel says. “This respected judge gave me, a convicted felon, the experience I needed to move up in my career. He’s been a mentor and a friend.” Shelton retired from UM-Dearborn in spring 2024.

Kinzel says he shares these stories with returning citizens — individuals recently released from prison — so they know there are people in the criminal justice system who want previous offenders to have opportunities.

Wayne County Airport Authority Officer Kaitlyn Wrobel, who graduated from UM-Dearborn in 2017, says Kinzel’s ability to see the criminal justice system through a unique lens has made him one of the best professors and mentors she’s had. He’s written letters of recommendation, provided encouragement during tough times and is now inspiring her to attend graduate school. 

She first had Kinzel as a professor in 2015 and recalls when Kinzel shared his background with the class. “You’d have never known if he didn’t tell you — you should have seen the reaction of the class. We were shocked in a good way. I didn’t know it was possible to climb back from a low like he had and be so successful. It’s not something I’d seen or heard about before,” says Wrobel, who has been a guest speaker in Kinzel’s classes since her graduation. “I am a driven person, but Aaron’s story inspired me to push myself further and to overcome any challenges that came my way.”

Kinzel draws on his experiences to advocate for criminal justice reform. He lobbied for the government to reinstate federal Pell grants for prisoners; in 2023, Congress passed a new law that made this a reality. He’s founded and collaborated with numerous organizations to assist returning citizens with their transition from prison to society. Kinzel also works with the U.S. Department of Justice to help train executive-level corrections professionals — Kinzel says former Director of the Michigan Department of Corrections Pat Caruso, one of Kinzel’s mentors, helped connect him to this opportunity.

Kinzel is currently taking his LSATs, with the hopes of earning a Juris Doctorate. He publicly shares his story as an example of what’s possible when someone is given the opportunity to show how they have changed after serving time in prison. He also develops collaborations — like workshops or panels — with justice-impacted people and the criminal justice system to create effective policy change. 

Wrobel says Kinzel’s experience not only showed her what’s possible for returning citizens, it also shaped how she views her profession. “It’s important to hold people accountable, but also remember that we are all human and make mistakes. A bad decision doesn’t make someone a bad person. Aaron’s living proof of that. I now train new officers and instill what I’ve learned from Aaron in every person I train,” she says. “Officers run into people on their worst days — and we need to solve problems. It's important to remember that how you handle a situation can have a life-long impact on someone, so we need to use our authority responsibly.”

Kinzel isn’t just making an impact in the classroom and in the criminal justice field. He’s also fostering changes on the homefront. Now a father of a school-focused and community-active teen, Kinzel has noticed a change in his century-long family cycle. “I’m a fan of history, but it doesn’t need to repeat itself,” he says. “The key to change is education. Education is the equalizer.”

Story by Sarah Tuxbury.