Higher Education and the Carceral State

Higher Education and the Carceral State: Transforming Together explores the diversity of ways in which university faculty and students are intervening in the system of mass incarceration through the development of correctional education programs for students in correctional settings that often result in mutual learning among both populations.

From arts and education courses offered in the Alabama Prison Arts + Education Project at Auburn University to a degree granting program at the state prison in Lancaster with California State University, Los Angeles, and many more inspiring, innovative, and change-making programs, individuals and communities across multiple disciplines in higher education are actively breaking the cycle of shame and division inherent in mass incarceration through direct engagement. This book explores these programs through the lens of the artists, scholars, practitioners, and faculty that have launched and facilitate them and demonstrate the diverse ways in which interventions and partnerships can take shape and the impacts that they have on the lives of those involved. Throughout, the book features the voices of people with lived experience among faculty and students.

Section One highlights the voices of students who are currently or formerly incarcerated while Section Two addresses diverse ways of collaborative through and across systems of corrections and education. Section Three features the voices of teaching artists while section four includes those that start and lead these programs, offering maps for others.

Demonstrating the ways that higher education can intervene in and disrupt the deeply traumatic experience of incarceration and shift the embedded social-emotional cycles that lead to recidivism, this book is both inspiration and guide for those seeking to create and sustain programs as well as to educate students about the types of programs universities bring to prisons.