Beyond The Inside-Out Course: Participants as Researchers, Educators, and Activists

• In Event: The International Inside-Out Prison Exchange Program

Abstract

In this presentation, I utilize the case study of Inside-Out courses to demonstrate that participatory action research (PAR) can address many, if not all, of the methodological and ethical problems of community-based research in perhaps the most restrictive community context, the prison. Specifically, I provide examples regarding what authentic research, intervention and activism can look like inside correctional facilities:
1) Members participate in each element of the research, from design to analyses to presentations to publication (research orientation);
2) Members are specifically geared toward changing some aspect of the prison system (an intervention);
3) Inside-Out group projects enable students and other stakeholders to better understand the needs, concerns and overall perspectives of individuals remanded to correctional facilities in order to principally develop effective short and long-term solutions (a vehicle for action or activism that extends from the project to local community members); and,
4) Inside-Out students have developed research projects and programs, written journal articles, spoke at community-based and college events, have started co-facilitating inside-out courses, and many former inside students have continued higher education pursuits upon release (PAR experiences provide Inside-Out students with invaluable social-cultural, educational and economic capital to be used to obtain better employment and educational opportunities).

Author

• Angela Bryant, Ohio State University, Newark