THE PRISON STUDIES PROJECT

In September 2008, Kaia Stern and Bruce Western launched the Prison Studies Project (PSP) at Harvard University to promote informed conversation about the challenges of mass incarceration. Born out of Harvard Law School’s Charles Hamilton Houston Institute for Race & Justice, PSP’s mission is to awaken the broadest possible public to the ways we punish, and to reimagine justice in the United States. Since its inception, PSP has been committed to raising public awareness, teaching college courses inside prison, and injecting into the public conversation a discussion of policy alternatives. Our work has focused on research, education and policy change.

PSP began compiling a list of higher education in prison programs throughout the United States in 2008. This was the first nationwide directory of higher education programs in U.S. prisons. For ten years, the National Directory of Higher Education Programs in Prison has been a central focus of the Prison Studies Project and an important resource for the higher education in prison community. We are excited to be partnering with the Alliance for Higher Education in Prison to transfer the National Directory to its website and to expand its reach.

 
 

THE FIRST PRISON STUDIES COURSE

Co-taught as an upper-division college seminar in Urban Sociology, the first Prison Studies course was at MCI Norfolk and included five Boston University graduates who audited the class from inside the state prison, ten BU college students who were incarcerated at MCI Norfolk, and five Harvard juniors in sociology, who traveled to the prison from Harvard’s campus in Cambridge. Each student involved in the program received full academic credit toward his or her bachelor’s degree, from either Harvard or BU. The Prison Studies partnership marks the first time that the DOC in Massachusetts has permitted traditional college students to learn alongside incarcerated students as part of a curriculum for college credit. Beginning in 2008, Harvard University sociology students and incarcerated men and women enrolled in Boston University’s Prison Education Program shared a classroom inside the walls of MCI Norfolk (a men’s medium security prison) and MCI Framingham (a women’s maximum security prison). Both Harvard and Boston University students received course credit in a semester-long seminar that explored topics such as ethics, race, poverty and community justice. We are working to revive this partnership.