[jirdperson]

Why not start by simply making prisons humane?

I don't know if you've ever visited an American prison, but they're a vestige of 19th-century social mores (ie - norms from an era where slavery, then Jim Crow, seemed reasonable to the average American). If you want to empower prisoners to study difficult topics like advanced mathematics, you're probably going to have to start treating them like people first.