As the Inside-Out Prison Exchange Program continues to expand across correctional and educational institutions worldwide, instructors face the challenge of assessing the impact of these classes. Scholarship consistently describes the Inside-Out program as life-changing and transformative but often fails to provide measures that document this…

The Boston University (BU) Prison Education Program (PEP) offers undergraduate degrees to students who are incarcerated at two Massachusetts state prisons. Twenty-five full-time BU and adjunct faculty teach postsecondary education courses to students who are incarcerated in a variety of liberal arts subjects in the program. This needs assessment…

Those who teach in prisons as employees of educational institutions or other nonprofit organizations are uniquely positioned to contribute to the public conversation about mass incarceration. Entering the prison as neither Department of Corrections employees nor family members or friends of the incarcerated, they interact with prisoners in a…

This particular lesson was developed for Cognitive Skills I, a central course in cognitive restructuring at the Mt. Olive Correctional Center. In this lesson the author developed a series of classroom activities to allow students to examine and assess current beliefs they possess, and to understand how these beliefs--whether judged rational or…