Below is a transcript of our conversation with Elizabeth Bradshaw:
David Nicholas:
I'm David Nicholas and this is Central Focus, a weekly look at research activity and innovative work from Central Michigan University students and faculty. Prisons are meant to punish people for their crimes, but also serve to rehabilitate. Then what? How do offenders who are released reintegrate into society? Part of that challenge has been the focus of students at CMU. Elizabeth Bradshaw, faculty member in the School of Politics, Society, Justice and Public Service, sat down to tell me more about this.
Elizabeth Bradshaw:
At Central, we developed a class called the Inside Out Prison Exchange Program. It's part of a national program. We've had it here since about 2013, 2014. What this involves is bringing college students into correctional facilities to learn alongside incarcerated people for a semester long course. And so, this began about 2014 in conjunction with the Central Michigan Correctional Facility just south of here in Saint Louis, Michigan. And we started taking CMU students in to learn alongside incarcerated folks there, and the class was called Social Issues Through the Prism of a Prison. And that focused on a variety of different sociological topics, poverty, gender inequality, racial inequality, problems within the justice system, social movements, things like that. Within the sociology program, we have a concentration in Social and Criminal justice here at CMU, and that's where most folks who are interested in working in the justice system ultimately find themselves majoring quite frequently. The class Social Issues Through the Prism of a Prison is an elective course as part of our major. Unfortunately, we haven't been able to offer it since the pandemic, but we're still looking for more opportunities, ways for students to get hands on experience interacting with hearing from the stories of incarcerated and formally incarcerated people.
DN:
Not that it would be a mirroring of what the CMU students had that were going in, but for those students that were in the prison system at the time, how did it fit into maybe other things that they were doing at the time?
EB:
So, what we've seen, especially since the 1980s and 1990s, since the since Congress removed Pell grants, availability for incarcerated people, we've seen a lot of degree programs leave the prisons, and so, what was available there is just kind of based on what individuals can afford. And so sometimes you'll have certain colleges, um, Jackson College in Michigan had was kind of on the forefront of offering classes within prisons in Michigan. Also, correspondence courses so done through mail remotely is another option, but there really wasn't anything beyond GED programs that the Department of Correction offers within the correctional institution. So, this is an important shift. To see this, I think some of the classes like Social Issues Through the Prism of a Prison as part of the national Inside Out Prison Exchange Program started to move in that direction, but what I found I was really, and this is probably a bias that a lot of people have, is how intelligent and how much just potential there really is incarcerated behind those walls so. Even if a lot of those folks don't necessarily have formal college training, many of them have done a lot of genuine reading and reflection and a lot of stuff. And so, I think a lot of folks on the outside, myself included, when I initially started going into the prisons thought, oh, maybe there would be different standards that I would hold the college students to versus the incarcerated students to, and that went out the window very quickly. Many of them what they may not have in quote book smarts, they definitely do have in hands on life experience, which they're able to connect to the readings that we do as a class.
DN:
I mean, did they sort of stay together almost as a group or were the formally incarcerated students, they just went and did their own thing?
EB:
Well, many of the, many incarcerated people aside from this class are very busy in all sorts of programming, and this is something that I really learned from these students in particular is that they had been involved, offering, organizing, teaching classes, worked dozens, hundreds of classes to fellow incarcerated people. So, where there might be lack of programming in other areas, many of these folks will develop their own programs to teach other people, and so that that's quite ambitious and extraordinary individuals. And those are some of the folks that have gone on to work in reentry. One of the mottos that people often say is those closest to the problem are closest to the solution, and those coming out, having experienced the struggles of finding jobs and finding shelter, reconnecting with family, reconnecting with basic technology which people often take for granted, all of those things can be really challenging and to be assisted and mentored through supportive relationships by other people who have also been incarcerated can really make a big difference as people get comfortable back in their communities.
DN:
Doctor Elizabeth Bradshaw is on the faculty with CMU’s School of Politics, Society, Justice, and Public Service. Professor Bradshaw, thanks very much for taking the time to talk with us. We appreciate it.
EB:
Thank you so much for having me. I really appreciate it.
