Prison Education and Reentry Commons^™

Finding Voice From The Inside: How Postsecondary Education Impacted Perceptions Of Higher Education For Long-Term Incarcerated Juveniles, Gregory Barraza

Education (PhD) Dissertations

There is a gap in the literature with regard to postsecondary opportunities for incarcerated youth. Minimal research and curriculum design are rarely available for the purpose of improving juvenile postsecondary correctional education thereby limiting recidivism rates of students in the juvenile justice system. The pilot program in this study attempted to provide a complete and comprehensive university program for long-term incarcerated juveniles to get them on track to obtain a bachelor’s degree. This dissertation addresses the high school experiences, including the School to Prison Pipeline and the academic experience to provide background information, justifying the importance of creating postsecondary academic …

Teaching In A Total Institution: Toward A Pedagogy Of Care In Prison Classrooms, Lauren J. Wolf

Journal of Prison Education and Reentry

This paper argues that a pedagogy of care can help reduce some of the human damage caused by incarceration. Rather than casting incarcerated men and women outside of the moral community and turning prisoners into a “them,” a pedagogy of care promotes inclusion and the creation of human connections. Recognizing prisoners’ humanity helps to dissolve some of the effects of institutionalization and may foster rehabilitation. Instead of limiting teachers to providers of information, as a traditional classroom expects, a pedagogy of care elevates teachers to human constituents of a learning community. This paper outlines a pedagogy of care in the …

The Prison Education Project In Scotland, Renford Reese

Journal of Prison Education and Reentry

The Prison Education Project (PEP) is the largest prison education program of its kind in the United States. With the assistance of 2,400 university student and faculty volunteers, PEP has served approximately 7,000 inmates in 14 correctional facilities in California since 2011. By providing academic, life skills, and career development programming, PEP aims to educate, empower, and transform the lives of incarcerated individuals. Since 2014, this program has taken a group of veteran volunteers to an international destination to teach courses in prisons in Uganda, England, and Scotland. This article will focus on the PEP-Scotland experience. Eleven PEP instructors traveled …

Public-School Systems Are Criminalizing Our Young People: Giving Voice To The Marganilized, Carrie Stoltzfus

Graduate Theses & Dissertations

A phenomenological qualitative study using Critical Race Theory and counter-storytelling was completed to investigate what K-12 public schools should be doing to keep young people out of the school-to-prison pipeline (STPP). This study took place in a large city in the Mid-Atlantic region of the United States. Interviews were completed with former students of the researcher who were previously incarcerated, educational professionals, and justice system professionals. Additionally, observations of the court systems and document reviews were completed in order to triangulate findings. Themes emerged around factors that lead to incarceration and the preferred practices to support young people to avoid …

Dr. Larry Brewster And California Arts-In-Corrections: A Case Study In Correctional Arts Research, Amanda Gardner Phd

Journal of Prison Education and Reentry

The correctional arts field is strong on supporting anecdotes but light on evidence-based research. In other words, it has more stories than numbers. One exception is the long-running California Arts-in-Corrections program. Not only does AIC have more studies demonstrating benefit, all but one of those studies were conducted by Dr. Larry Brewster, currently of the University of San Francisco. This case study tells the story of how that body of research came to exist. It juxtaposes the importance of having evidence-based research on correctional arts programs with the challenges of conducting such research. Readers will gain an understanding of how …

Correctional Landscape Studies: Improving The Restorative Potential, Allyson Fairweather

Landscape Architecture & Regional Planning Masters Projects

The United States is the world’s leader in incarceration with 2.2 million people currently in the nation’s prisons and jails. On average, one-third of former offenders will return to prison for re-offence within three years of their release (Bureau of Justice Statistics 2018). This cycle is known as recidivism, and demonstrates a major reflection of the criminal justice system’s failure to provide rehabilitation that meets the needs of the incarcerated population. However, horticultural therapy in prison may offer a sliver of hope. Also referred to as Green Prison Programs (GPPs), studies indicate that participants in these programs gain valuable job …

Innovative Phone-In Radio Program For Prisoners Enrolled As Students At Indira Gandhi National Open University, Sivaswaroop Pathaneni Dr

Journal of Prison Education and Reentry

Providing education to prisoners while in jail is a win-win situation for both prisoners and society. For prisoners, the educational experiences in jail reduce their mental strain, isolation, and stress due to incarceration and simultaneously make them employment ready after their release from prison. Education helps prisoners become fit to earn on their own, and thereby reduces the chances of returning to jail (recidivism). Therefore, through educational experiences, the government saves money on prisoners' maintenance and earns taxes from their later employment. Providing education to prisoners, especially increasing efforts to provide quality education, such as is available to common students, …

“The Feeling Of Fear Was Not From My Student, But From Myself”: A Pre-Service Teacher’S Shift From Traditional To Problem-Posing Second Language Pedagogy In A Mexican Youth Prison, G. Sue Kasun, Abigail Santos, Gyewon Jang, Zurisaray Espinosa

Journal of Multicultural Affairs

This era of globalization, capitalism, and economic progress has given rise to mass incarceration, as a considerable number of youths in developing and developed countries live behind bars in detention facilities without appropriate educational support. Educators in these facilities deposit knowledge, through traditional pedagogical approaches, under systemic oppression and surveillance deemed necessary for safety and security. This study investigated implementations of Freire’s (2000) problem-posing pedagogy using a participatory action research (PAR) approach through the lens of critical theory. Two of the co-authors helped develop a Freirean language teaching program in an urban youth prison in Mexico, centering student teachers’ critical …

Georgia Department Of Juvenile Justice - Education And Reentry Collaborative Programming, Zane Shelfer, Cathy Smith-Curry

National Youth Advocacy and Resilience Conference

Many youth experience barriers reentering their local school system once released from confinement. The Georgia Department of Juvenile Justice's Office of Reentry Services and School System work collaboratively to remove these barriers by building partnerships with school systems state-wide. This presentation will provide participants a programmatic overview and framework used to reduce barriers.

The 4 Things That Really Matter And How They Tie Into Life Development, Derrick Hayes

National Youth Advocacy and Resilience Conference

The 4 Things That Really Matter and How They TIE Into Life Development is a program where participants will see how the choices they make on a daily basis can determine the habits that they have for the rest of their life. They will begin to network with each other to see how to build positive relationships that will empower others and put them in a position to overcome obstacles. Staff or participants will leave the presentation with tools and strategies that can help their students before, during and after High School.

Lead Editor's Welcome, Cormac Behan

Journal of Prison Education and Reentry

Lead Editor's Welcome, Volume 6 Issue 2.

Free Battered Texas Women: Survivor-Advocates Organizing At The Crossroads Of Gendered Violence, Disability, And Incarceration, Cathy Marston Phd

Verbum Incarnatum: An Academic Journal of Social Justice

This article recaps my symposium presentation, where I argue that feminist organizing strategies are central to healing our society and creating restorative justice from my perspective as a survivor of occupational injury, battering, and criminalization for self-defense. This includes the creation of Free Battered Texas Women. We prefer to think of ourselves as survivor-advocates who use a variety of tactics to empower ourselves, incarcerated battered women, and citizens. These strategies include pedagogy; poetry and other written forms; art; and legislative advocacy. I blend this grassroots activism with feminist disability theory, radical feminist theory, feminist ethnography, and feminist criminology.

Incarcerated Fathers’ Experiences In The Read To Your Child/Grandchild Program: Supporting Children’S Literacy, Learning, And Education, Esther Prins, Tabitha Stickel, Anna Kaiper-Marquez

Journal of Prison Education and Reentry

In response to rising parental incarceration, some correctional facilities and outside organizations offer family literacy programs for parents in prison. However, research on these correctional education initiatives is scant. This paper uses qualitative data to analyze how 11 fathers in a rural Pennsylvania prison were involved in their children’s literacy, learning, and education before and during incarceration and through the Read to Your Child/Grandchild (RYCG) program. Before RYCG, most fathers had taken steps such as reading to children, teaching reading and math, attending parent-teacher conferences, helping with homework, and singing and rhyming—and then sought to continue supporting their children’s learning …

An Organizational Analysis Of Foreign National Prisoners’ Participation Possibilities In Flanders (Belgium), Dorien Brosens, Flore Croux, Bart Claes, Stijn Vandevelde, Liesbeth De Donder

Journal of Prison Education and Reentry

This mixed-method study first provides insight into the Belgian prison population — particularly foreign national prisoners — based on an analysis of the penal database SIDIS Suite (N = 10,356). Second, qualitative telephone interviews have been conducted with the activity coordinators of all Flemish and Brussels prisons (N = 17) to investigate which prison activities (e.g., cultural, educational, and health-related activities, sports, vocational training, and forensic welfare services) are available to, and accessible by foreign national prisoners. This article demonstrates several initiatives that have been taken to enhance foreign nationals’ participation in prison activities and highlights the struggles that activity …

Replacing Death With Life? The Rise Of Lwop In The Context Of Abolitionist Campaigns In The United States, Michelle Miao

Northwestern Journal of Law & Social Policy

On the basis of fifty-four elite interviews[1] with legislators, judges, attorneys, and civil society advocates as well as a state-by-state data survey, this Article examines the complex linkage between the two major penal trends in American society during the past decades: a declining use of capital punishment across the United States and a growing population of prisoners serving “life without the possibility of parole” or “LWOP” sentences. The main contribution of the research is threefold. First, the research proposes to redefine the boundary between life and death in relation to penal discourses regarding the death penalty and LWOP. LWOP …

A Case For Unforgiveness As A Legitimate Moral Response To Historical Wrongs, Hollman Lozano

Journal of Educational Controversy

Abstract:

The emergence of forgiveness as the preferred mechanism through which historical wrongs are addressed within reconciliation discourses has meant that for the people who cannot forgive or will not forgive, there are no alternatives other than insisting on forgiveness until it hopefully one day arrives. As such, the point of unforgiveness is to constitute an agentic space where the people who cannot forgive can articulate their stance in ways that not only allow them to articulate their resistance to the injunction to forgive, but also constitute alternative spaces whereby they can articulate their stance in inclusive ways. If we …

Relationships Between Education Track, Adverse Childhood Experience, And Recidivism Among Juveniles, Catherine Gammage

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

A high recidivism level, despite attempts by regulatory agencies and various institutions to decrease it, is currently a disturbing problem of the juvenile justice system. Adjudicated youth released from residential treatment centers are often reincarcerated within 3 years after their release. Residential treatment centers provide mandated educational and treatment services for all incarcerated youth. The educational programs offered by residential treatment centers should include academic and career technology programs which support community reintegration. The opportunity for students to receive a high school diploma and industry certifications for career readiness is an important way to decrease recidivism for juveniles. This study …

Finding Justice, Hannah Miller

Capstones

Finding Justice tackles the devastation caused by wrongful conviction through the journey of Jeffrey Deskovic. After serving 16 years in prison for a murder he didn’t commit, Deskovic has strived to rebuild his life. The film follows him as he finishes law school and runs a foundation that frees the wrongfully convicted, all while dealing with lingering trauma.

Call It What It Is: Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (Ptsd) From Life In Prison, Thom Gehring

Journal of Prison Education and Reentry

Call it What it is: Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) From Life in Prison

A Note About The Cover Art, Trey Hartt

Journal of Prison Education and Reentry

Give Us Opportunities, 2016

Artist: Tee

Digital Print

Performing Statistics is a cultural organizing project that uses art to model, imagine, and advocate for alternatives to youth incarceration. Every summer, the project creates art with a group of teens in the Richmond Juvenile Detention Center’s post-dispositional program about their experiences navigating the justice system and their vision for a world without youth prisons. The artwork is then produced in a number of ways in order to reach decision-makers in the education, law enforcement, and juvenile justice systems. The project’s ethos looks to young people impacted by the juvenile justice …