Prisoner Reactions to a Presentation on the "Pirandellian" Prison of the Mind

• In Event: Convict Criminology Across Spaces

Abstract

My duties at Lincoln University of Missouri (LU) include teaching Introduction to Sociology to prisoners at the Jefferson City Correctional Center (JCCC) enrolled in LUs Bachelor of Liberal Studies program. In teaching Introduction to Sociology at the JCCC, I select topics that should help the prisoner-students understand their past and return to society. For the Spring Semester of 2024, I lectured on the “pirandellian” prison of the mind, a phrase coined by Stanford University’s Phillip Zimbardo to describe how anyone can become socially imprisoned by racism, sexism, and other discriminatory processes. I first became familiar with the term “pirandellian” prison of the mind when teaching mental patients at the Elgin State Hospital (Illinois) overcome the dehumanization and stigmatization of mental illness while transitioning back into the community. The Elgin project was part of a federally funded program designed by Dr. Zimbardo, who refers to it as one of projects associated with the Stanford Prison Experiment. After lecturing on the “pirandellian” prison of the mind, I assigned my prisoner-students a paper on whether they thought the “pirandellian” concepts could help them understand their own imprisonment and efforts to reintegrate back into the community. In this paper, I discuss the prisoner-student reactions.

Author

• Gary J. Kowaluk, Lincoln University of Missouri