The Background of Inside-Out

While I would love to dive into writing about class experiences/issues/things that struck me while traveling, I think some background information is in order. This post will give an overview of the programme at its inception- its founding story, principles, statement, etc.

I would highly recommend going to the Temple University website about Inside-Out at your own time- it isn’t too packed with information and is a rather quick read. I’ll be using a lot of their material for this post- where I don’t have a ‘click here for more’ link after a quote, the information would have come from their website.

One thing to note before this all begins: As I state in my About page, I had the opportunity of being part of Inside-Out during my stint at the University of Oregon’s Clark Honors College (UOCHC). I experienced all this in the U.S., but now write about it from Singapore. More on the significance on this in another post in the future.

 

Why Temple University/Who is Lori Pompa?

 

Lori Pompa, Founder and Director of Inside-Out

 

 

‘In 1994, Lori Pompa, a Temple professor and longtime volunteer at several prisons, was hired to teach a course on the corrections system for Temple’s criminal justice department. Pompa says it wasn’t long before she realized, “we can’t just sit in a classroom and do this, we have to go in.”

Soon enough, Pompa was taking her students into prisons and meeting with death row inmates once a semester. The experiences proved so valuable for both the students and those behind bars, Pompa felt compelled to expand on the concept. By 1997 she had created the Inside-Out Prison Exchange program, a course that meets once a week for an entire semester behind prison walls…

…Inside-Out has proven so successful that in 2002 the Soros Foundation awarded Pompa a [highly prestigious US$65,000] grant to develop it into a national program. Over 160 professors from 80 colleges across the country have been trained in the program’s curriculum.’ (Click here for more).

 

She is now the Founder and Director of Inside-Out, and has taken the program nation-wide. So far, 18 states in the U.S. have participated in this programme, such as Maryland, New York, Delaware, Ohio and Oregon, amongst others.

 

Whose Idea Was It?

‘In fact, the idea for Inside-Out belongs not to Pompa, but to Paul, a bespeckled, soft-spoken man currently serving a life sentence at the State Correctional Institution at Graterford.

“Honestly, I don’t really think I would have come up with this idea myself,” said Pompa, noting that students in the program are identified only by their first names. “It’s not the obvious thing.”

A decade ago, Pompa’s students were participating in a panel discussion with some “lifers.” The dialogue was so intense that Paul said the groups could likely talk for an entire semester.

Pompa mulled over the idea for a while — almost two years, actually — and eventually wrote the Inside-Out curriculum, which, by its orchestration and locale, invites students to come together as one group to explore issues of crime, justice, race, class and victimization.’ (Click here for more).

 

How Does Literature Relate?

Professor Shankman referred to Paul many times throughout our course. Paul was present at a huge Inside-Out meeting a while ago, and had stated that his vision for Inside-Out was, (paraphrased), the bridging of two worlds. This could be interpreted in a variety of ways, of course, and to Professor Shankman, it was confirmation that reading Literature and Philosophy in his Inside-Out class was in line with the program’s mission statement:

‘The Inside-Out Prison Exchange Program was established to create a dynamic partnership between institutions of higher learning and correctional systems, in order to deepen the conversation about and transform our approaches to issues of crime and justice.’

It’s perhaps useful to note that most often, it is criminal justice and sociology courses that are taught under Inside-Out.

 

Why Bother?

‘It has become commonplace to note that, with two million people incarcerated, the United States has the largest prison population of any country in the world, in both relative and absolute terms, with millions more men and women under other forms of criminal justice supervision.  The other side of this coin is that we also have hundreds of thousands of men and women across the country working in prison security, administration, treatment, parole and probation.  Meanwhile, our violent crime rate, though lower than at any time since the 1970s, still is many times higher than that of other western industrialized nations, and more than two-thirds of those released from prison are back behind bars within three years.   

The cost of this situation can be measured in many ways: in our vast public corrections expenditures, in the pain suffered by those whose lives are damaged or destroyed by crime, in the frustration and wasted energy of many men and women who devote their lives to working in corrections but feel they aren’t making a difference, and in the wasted talents of those whose life situations and poor choices have led to their spending years of their lives locked behind bars, shut away from their families and communities.’

 

How Does Inside-Out Hope To Arrest (pun intended) This Problem?

‘Inside-Out provides an opportunity to put a human face on a problem that can be kept simplified only if it remains faceless.  The ability not only to look at issues in complex ways, but to recognize the complexity in ourselves and others, obviates our propensity for knee-jerk reactions.  Stretching beyond our simplistic assumptions will, in time, produce a growing transformation in public thought.  By exploring theoretical concepts inside the prison, theory is moved out of the purely mental sphere to a more powerful level – as the mind is engaged, so is the heart.  If how we feel, to some extent, drives what we think, herein lies the crux of the transformative potential of this program.’

That is, by the way, my favourite paragraph of the Inside-Out website. It relates so well to my personal experience with the programme.

 

Alright! That’s about it, for now. I hope that it all was just enough information for you to grasp the background behind the Inside-Out Prison Exchange as a nation-wide programme in the U.S. Now that the programme’s founding principles have been covered, expect future posts to relate to the UOCHC experience at the Oregon State Penitentiary (OSP).

Lastly- thanks for your interest thus far. It’s heartening to see page hits going up and getting msgs of support from everyone. :]