The Benefits of Teaching Sociology to Prisoners

Abstract

SEVERAL WRITERS HAVE discussed the challenges and benefits of teaching in prison settings. Roberts (1971) describes prison education as an opportunity for the rehabilitation of prisoners. Jones and d'Errico (1994) ask whether higher education in prison a contradiction in terms given the conflict between the goals of education and correction (rehabilitation). Thomas (1983) presents some of the special problems of teaching in a maximum-security prison, but concludes that even in the most oppressive of total institutions, teaching sociology presents students with the potential for their intellectual emancipation. Finally, Osberg (1986) discusses the special rewards of teaching psychology to prisoners, and Fraley (1991) presents the benefits of prison education from an inmate's perspective. More recently, the analysis of prison education has focused on its political dimensions. Using the idea of critical pedagogy developed by Paulo Freire (1981; 1985; Shor and Freire 1987), this perspective argues that the goal of prison education should be empowerment and liberation rather than the domestication of prisoners. Collins (1995), for example, criticizes current models of prisoner rehabilitation based on a disciplinary technology whose aim, citing Foucault: is to forge a docile body that may be subjugated, used, transformed and improved (p. 56). Davidson (1995:2) states that without individual empowerment, prisoners remain trapped within the vision of others. Sbarbaro (1995) suggests critical pedagogy begins with the rejection of conventional methods of teaching and replacing these methods with a student/teacher partnership. In this article, I examine the benefits of teaching sociology to prisoners. I argue that teaching sociology to prisoners presents an opportunity to ask prisoner-students to use reflexivity as well as classroom materials to develop their critical consciousness. I also emphasize the importance of instructor reflexivity as a method to promote student insight and critical consciousness. Finally, I consider the benefits of teaching prisonerstudents for the instructor. These instructor benefits are the unexpected dialogue that develops between the instructor and prisoner-students, and the recognition of the importance of instructor reflexivity as method for teaching traditional undergraduate sociology students.