Unique sociology course pairs inmates with students
Thirteen students will see the inside of a prison more than a dozen times by the end of this semester, but they won't be serving sentences.
Members of Central Michigan University's chapter of the national Inside/Out program spend every Tuesday evening of the spring semester in the Central Michigan Correctional Facility in St. Louis. SOC 399: Social Issues Through the Prism of a Prison is taught by sociology faculty Justin Smith, who received the 2015 Provost's Award for Outstanding Research and Activity for his examination of the criminal justice system.
"It's (13) students from the inside and (13) students from the outside," Smith said. "Half the students are from CMU and half are incarcerated men serving time in St. Louis correctional facility. We meet once a week. We talk about issues such as the criminal justice system, but we also talk about gender, race and racism, class, social change and social movements and collective action."
Both sets of students apply for and undergo an interview process before being accepted into the program.
Inside students are comprised of 13 men serving sentences in the facility, and range in age from 20 to 65 years old.
"About half of the 13 inside students are late 20's-early 30's and the rest are 45-65," said Rochester Hills senior Samantha Christie. "A lot of them have been incarcerated for several years, but they're up to date on current events. There's been class periods when I've learned more about a current event from one of them. It's cool to know that they're so interested in following along. They're inmates, and there's a reason for that, but it's easy to look past that."
This is currently the only course available at CMU that holds class inside of a correctional facility.
"I went to the closing ceremony at the end of April last year and heard a lot of the student comments, and a lot of them said that this was their best experience of their college career, going to St. Louis Correctional Facility to class," said Katherine Rosier, Chair of the Departent of Sociology, Anthropology and Social Work.
"A lot of this is a reaction to making sure we're improving education in prisons, but also in higher education institutions, so it's a way to offer CMU students a very diverse setting to learn in," Smith said. "It's a way to learn from a variety of experiences, a variety of ages."
He and Bradshaw would like to see other departments offer the same experience for students in the future.
"Both the inside guys and outside students get a lot out of it," Smith said. "The inside guys are mostly older, and they've been through a different lifestyle than the students. The students have had a lot more access to education. We're able to have a lot of good discussions. It isn't a lecture, we sit in a circle and discuss."
Livonia senior Brynn Cavanaugh found that her inside classmates were surprisingly "well-spoken" and helped generate interesting discussion on social issue topics.
"Different perspectives bring out different opinions, but we actually have a lot in common," Cavanaugh said. "A lot of our discussions are very unifying, there isn't a lot of difference between us."
CMU students wear maroon shirts and jeans when in class behind bars, donning uniforms of their own to address their classmates as equals.
The Inside Out program began in 1997 at Philadelphia's Temple University, and has since become a staple of social and criminal justice education at over 100 universities, including University of Michigan Dearborn, Michigan State, Grand Valley, Northern Michigan and Eastern Michigan Universities.
This program was adapted into a special topics course by Smith and sociology faculty Liz Bradshaw last year.
"It was a phenomenal experience. It leaves students with a changed perspective on the social justice system," Bradshaw said.
