It’s an eerie feeling to walk into a prison. In my experience, first you must stop at a towering metal gate in the parking lot and speak your full name into a speaker so that the guard inside can confirm that you are allowed to enter. Then you actually walk into the prison and are met with more security. All of your belongings, including any technology, go into a bin that is put through a scanning device like the ones you see at the airport. You have to give your ID to the security guard and then walk through a metal detector. After you have been cleared, you get your belongings back and sign your name on a list before receiving a blue-light stamp on your hand. You must wait for a corrections officer to escort you to your next location.
At this point, you feel extremely vulnerable. You have no way to contact anyone, there are guards all around and just outside, the prisoners are walking to and from places while sending curious glances your way. You feel like a true outsider.
If you’re like me, you eventually make it with the rest of your group to a room that has a little bit of everything in it. There are charts on the walls with names written on it, pictures of lots of plants, bookshelves, a locked up section of tools behind you, a giant fishtank, rows of tables and chairs and a loud blowing fan. There’s also prisoners sitting in some of the chairs. People who are strangers at this moment but will be friends in only a few short months.
How did I get to this point? Well, last semester, I decided to take a history class called “Women in the Contemporary World.” For nearly 16 weeks, my classmates and I, mainly consisting of women from all ages and backgrounds, studied women’s memoirs and histories while having the opportunity to write our own. Having so many diverse backgrounds, we all learned from each other and formed a true community of people who care about each other inside and outside the class walls.
This class was part of a program through John Carroll called Inside/Out. As shared in the syllabus for the class, “Started in 1997 by the Temple University instructor Lori Pompa, this program brings campus-based college students together with students living in incarcerated settings for a semester-long course of study. The program is rooted in the belief that learning is a transformative human endeavor and that being a part of a non-traditional learning community such as this one can deepen and enhance the learning experience for all those involved.”
While taking this course, we did not think of ourselves as students versus prisoners. Instead, the students who lived on campus were called “outside” students and the students who lived at the Northeast Reintegration Center (NERC), where the class was held, were called “inside” students. Every student in the classroom was taking this course for three credits, given the same coursework and treated as any other student would be. The only difference between this course and others at John Carroll was that it was held at a women’s prison.
This experience was a living lesson in privilege, the criminal justice system and how certain members in society are treated differently than others.
Inside the classroom, though we were treated the same by our teacher and each other, we were reminded of our differences more than once by those not in the class. One example that comes to mind is that during one of our classes, the warden of the prison, who looked like any regular woman, casually strolled into class and listened in before walking out. At the time, the outside students did not know who this woman was—we thought she was just a regular guard.
This small moment meant nothing to us, but potentially everything to the inside students as this woman holds so much power over them. Someone with the power to change their life for the better or worse can come and go at will wherever they are and I can only imagine what that feels like. This moment happened relatively close to the beginning of the semester, and was a stark reminder that these women inside of the prison live very different lives than we do.
Another prominent example that comes to mind was when a male judge came to talk to the class. He explained how he conducts drug court and recognizes that people’s backgrounds and upbringings play a big role in the decisions they make. At first, everything he was saying sounded very promising.
However, this completely changed once he brought a power dynamic into the room by asking the inside students in front of everyone what they did to get into prison. Then, he admitted that he looked up the inside students before coming and shared details from their cases with everyone, going as far as to bring notes about them with him. He came into our established community and completely disrupted the respectful atmosphere with his gross display of power, all while sitting casually in his chair, leaned back with one leg crossed over the other.
This moment was one that we all debriefed on multiple occasions and my main takeaway was that it was horrific that someone in the criminal justice system with so much power would just throw that around so blatantly. It is appalling that a sentence in our system means that all sense of personal privacy is gone and that we as outside students have more privilege than we can ever imagine and do not even think about. However, because the criminal justice system equates prisoners with lesser values, this is behavior that unfortunately did not seem uncommon.
While this was just a history class, my main takeaways had little to do with history and everything to do with seeing the humanity in every human being, recognizing my personal privilege and learning the value of purposely putting myself into situations where growth will occur, even if it makes me uncomfortable at times. This class fundamentally changed the way that I view the criminal justice system and I truly think this is an experience that students should not miss.
