Complex Sentences: A Portrait of Men Searching for the Purpose of Education in a Massachusetts State Prison

• In Event: 69.057 - Roundtable Session 32
  In Roundtable Session: 69.057-6 - Justice and the Justice System?

Abstract

While policy-makers and scholars often measure the success of prison education programs by quantitative outcomes such as recidivism and post-release employment opportunities, there is a gap in the literature with regard to how these programs shape a prisoner’s sense of agency, self-authorship, and identity. For the 159,000 people serving life sentences in the United States, we need a new way of conceptualizing the purpose of education that opens up our understanding of what the purpose of education in prison is. Using portraiture, I explore how five men serving life sentences in a Massachusetts state prison make meaning of education in a way that moves beyond instrumentalism and vocation, and instead toward cognitive liberation and a reclamation of humanity.

Author

• Clinton W. Smith, Harvard University