Prison Vocational Classrooms as Third Space: Liberation Inside Out

• In Event: Critical Geographies of Space in Education: Hopeful Spaces Within Oppressive Places

Abstract

Prisons are, by their very nature, oppressive places that exist to control and punish individuals. Carceral geographies are hierarchical, and tiers (i.e., prison yards) are laid out in segregated security levels that dictate which inmates are allowed where. Security levels of inmates are established at intake and can decrease for good behavior, opening up privileges, or increase for misbehavior, becoming more restrictive. Career and Technical Education (CTE) programs are privileged spaces within prisons. All programs have extensive waitlists, and based on the most recent data from the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation (CDCR), there is only enough capacity to serve approximately 7% (N=8,694, out of 124,081) of California inmates. In reality, only approximately 5% (N=6,433) are being served due to a reported 74% program utilization rate (C-ROB, 2016). Increasing awareness about, and the rising costs of, mass incarceration have driven recent state policies aimed at reducing recidivism and prison populations (e.g.: sentencing reforms such as AB 109, The Public Safety Realignment of 2011).

In 2016, I was part of the team from the Resourcing Excellence in Education (REEd) Center at the University of California, Davis, that was contracted by the CDCR to conduct a legislative mandated evaluation of CTE programs across state prisons. Data were collected at seven institutions and included prison and classroom level observations; fieldnotes; and interviews with students enrolled in prison CTE programs, instructors of programs, Correctional Counselors, and education and prison administrators. The evaluation found a number of barriers to program efficacy (e.g.: capacity issues, lack of resources, etc.) and student success (e.g.: inmate assignment, industry certifications, etc.). However, the evaluation also found that instructors in CTE courses were highly valued, and, in general, program participation had a positive affective impact on students.

This paper examines those data using critical discourse analysis (Van Dijk, 1993), through the lens of carceral geography (Dirsuweit, 1999; Moran, 2015; Schliehe, 2016), to make the case for prison CTE classrooms as loci of Third Space (Fanon, 1967; Bhabha, 1988; Soja, 1996; Kipfer, 2007). In particular, Fanonian spatiality is used to negotiate the differences between carceral spaces to discuss the politics of place and identity (Keith & Pile, 1993) in order to make an argument for prison CTE classrooms as privileged spaces of decolonization, where incarcerated individuals are able to reclaim agency and humanity.

Studies have long demonstrated that participation in prison education programs reduces recidivism (Allen, 1988; Wilson, et al., 2000; Gordon & Weldon, 2003; Vacca, 2004). This study extends the literature by developing a deeper understanding of the psychosocial impacts (Wooldredge, 1999) of the degrees of liberation that individuals claim by participation in prison CTE programs through critical perspectives.

Author

• Diana Recouvreur, University of California - Davis