Roundtable: Bringing Campus to the Yard: Cross-cultural Processes of Teaching Combined Higher Education and Incarcerated Students

Session Submission Type: Roundtable Session

Abstract/Description

Access to education for people who are incarcerated has long been recognized as beneficial for both ‘rehabilitation’ in custody and re-entry post-release. However, education in a custodial setting can also benefit criminal justice students whose knowledge is predominantly textbook derived. The innovative pedagogy whereby criminal justice college students attend a prison weekly to learn alongside incarcerated people for a semester first originated at Temple University, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania nearly three decades ago, and this model has now spread across the globe. This roundtable consists of academics who utilize and research this methodology in Australia, Europe, the US, and the UK. We discuss the benefits and challenges of combined higher education and custodial student cohorts, as well as the cross-cultural implementation of higher education in prison settings, such as liaising between universities and corrections, different modalities of curriculum development, and graduate outcomes. We also explore the ways in which prison walls separate the people in custody from the people in the community, and why this methodology of bringing distinct social groups into a shared learning space is experienced as transformative by all involved.

Sub Unit

• Area XIV. Roundtables

Chair

• Jeffrey Ian Ross, University of Baltimore

Discussants

• Kate Kennedy, RMIT University

• Marietta Martinovic, RMIT University

• Andreas Aresti, University of Westminster

• Sacha Darke, University of Westminster

• Xavier Perez, DePaul University

• Lucrezia Speroloni, University of Westminster, London

Organized by a Division or external group?

no