The Jesuit Prison Education Network opens minds and transforms lives

A woman we are going to call “Susie” had never been in trouble before she made a mistake recently that cost her 13 months of her life. She ended up in prison on a drug-related charge, and when she was offered a chance to take a John Carroll University (JCU) class as part of the Jesuit Prison Education Network (JPEN), she did not hesitate.

“Something with John Carroll was impressive and important to me,” she says. “It gave me a sense of normalcy, too, taking a college class. I’m so grateful to have had that experience because it took me out of my misery.”

JCU and Marquette University are the two Midwest Jesuit schools currently offering classes in detention centers as part of the Jesuit Prison Education Network. Though some schools have had prison programs for years, the JCU classes are the newest in the JPEN network. Nine Jesuit universities now offer college classes in prisons, and that number could increase in 2024.

“This is a call to our shared humanity and at the heart of Jesuit education is transformation,” says JPEN Coordinator Fr. Thomas Curran, SJ. “Prison education is mutual transformation.”

Susie and nine other incarcerated women attended a “Modern Social Problems” class with 10 campus-based students from JCU in 2022. They met one night per week for 16 weeks in the visitor center of the Ohio Department of Rehabilitation & Correction’s Northeast Reintegration Center (NERC) in Cleveland. Another class met there in the fall semester of 2023. All of the students read books, wrote papers and worked on projects together as part of what is called the Inside- Out program.

“I went in with a little anxiety,” says Selena Alamir, a pre-med student who graduated from JCU in December. “We just, from day one, connected on a deep level. I walked in with one feeling and I walked out with a completely different one.”

The course, and the interaction with the Inside students, emphasized her desire to include social justice in her future practice. Many women at NERC mentioned mental health as a concern, and to that end, Alamir is working on connecting them with JCU students in a pen pal program. Another JCU student is developing a program in which JCU students would periodically visit women who do not receive regular visitors. Both projects would help the inmates stay connected to the outside world.

THE PROGRAM REMINDS CAMPUS-BASED STUDENTS OF THE VALUE OF THEIR EDUCATION, AND HELPS INCARCERATED STUDENTS RECLAIM THEIR HUMANITY.

The Inside-Out program was developed at Temple University in the late 1990s and brought to JCU by Dr. Richard Clark. A criminologist, Clark wanted to teach a class in a prison. While researching options, he stumbled upon Inside-Out and contacted the associate dean about it. “He emailed me back pretty quickly and said he had just sent an email to the dean,” Clark says. “He was immediately on board.”

The prison quickly signed on to the idea, and Dr. Malia McAndrew was brought in to help create the course. The process took about two years to fall into place, and the coursework is now a part of the Peace, Justice and Human Rights program at JCU.

“This is about a shared intellectual experience, and because you’re bringing together people who normally do not have the ability to interact together, it raises everybody’s level of engagement,” McAndrew says.

The program reminds campus-based students of the value of their education, and helps incarcerated students reclaim their humanity. “A lot of our incarcerated students have said no one calls them by their first name inside the prison,” McAndrew says.

Inside students receive no college credit for the classes, but for two hours each week they get something more, Clark says: “Last year one of the Inside students walked up to us and said, ‘The best thing for me is, I found out I can still talk to a normal human being. For seven years all I’ve talked to are corrections officers and prisoners. You guys treat me like a normal person. It’s so comforting that I can still do that.’”

Marquette’s JPEN program offers a total of 13 classes in three detention facilities. Since 2021 Marquette has also operated a blended model of study in which people who have served their time can go to the Milwaukee campus for a class in philosophy, sociology, psychology, history or business.

“Next year we’re hoping to launch an environmental biology class that’s connected to a bee husbandry program we run at the prison,” says Darren Wheelock, one of three faculty founders of the program. “We’ve had so many Marquette students say, ‘This program was the best thing I’ve ever done at Marquette.’”

About 450 students have gone through the blended courses at Marquette. While the classes give Inside students hope, some campus-based students have changed their majors and career paths after taking them.

NERC is so happy with the program that the warden asked for a course on women’s studies. In response, McAndrew is teaching “Introduction to Women in the Contemporary World” in the spring semester of 2024.