In 2012, the U.S. Supreme Court held in Miller v. Alabama that it is unconstitutional to sentence a juvenile offender to mandatory life-without-parole. A 2016 ruling allowed this to be applied retroactively. In practical terms, this means that those juvenile offenders previously sentenced to mandatory life-with-out-parole can seek re-sentencing by the trial court. That is exactly what happened to John Pace, Stacey Torrance, and Charles Brown. They were featured in a Philadelphia Inquirer article from September 6, 2017, about formerly-incarcerated "juvenile lifers." In this, the third episode of the Inside-Out podcast, Dave Krueger talks with them about their experiences of higher education in prison and the role that Inside-Out courses played in their personal and professional development.
The Inside-Out Prison Exchange Program:
The Inside-Out Podcast is hosted by David M. Krueger and is a production of The Inside-Out Center at Temple University in Philadelphia. The Inside-Out Prison Exchange Program is an educational program that facilitates dialog across cultural differences and social status. It started in 1997, originating as a means to bring together campus-based college students and incarcerated students for a semester-long course held in a correctional setting. This educational model has been replicated across the United States and in several countries. It has grown into an international network of nearly 800 trained faculty, 22,000 alumni, and hundreds of higher education and correctional administrators, who have sponsored classes over the past 20 years. Inside-Out seeks to bring about social change through transformative education. To find out more about the program, make a financial contribution, or apply to upcoming Instructor Training Institutes, please visit the website at insideoutcenter.org.
This episode of the Inside-Out Podcast features James Forman, Jr., a professor of Law at Yale Law School. Dr. Forman talks about his journey from public defender to law school professor and how the Inside-Out pedagogy informs his teaching. He'll also talk about his new book Locking Up Our Own: Crime and Punishment in Black America.
Episode Guide:
1:30: Could you start out by sharing your journey from serving as a public defender to teaching in a law school?
5:37: How did you hear about and how did you get interested in teaching through the Inside-Out program?
7:37: What was it like teaching a class in the Inside-Out model for the first time. Do you think teaching an Inside-Out course changed how you taught your other classes?
12:54: Let's shift gears for a minute. You have a new book out, Locking Up Our Own: Crime and Punishment in Black America. Could you talk a little bit about what brought you to write this book?
18:07: What do you think is behind this decades-long shift in our society towards mass incarceration? Why has locking up so many Americans become such an accepted part of American policy?
21:55: In recent years the public discourse about mass incarceration has been changing. Where do you think we stand today, especially in light of the 2016 election?
25:47: What do you want your readers to take away from your book?
28:37: How does education speak to mass incarceration and, specifically, why do you see value in the Inside-Out approach to education?
0:20 A description of the Inside-Out program
1:29 An introduction to Lori Pompa
2:00 Lori discusses how the program began, what is unique about the Inside-Out method of teaching and learning, and her thoughts on winning the 2016 Lifetime Achievement Award for Teaching from the American Society of Criminology.
15:52 An introduction to Paul from Graterford
Note: from here on, sound quality is lower due to technical challenges w/incoming call from Graterford Prison.
16:30 Paul discusses the history of his incarceration and how he became motivated to become an educator. He also discusses the Graterford Think Tank and the impact that Lori has had on his life and the thousands of students around the world who have taken Inside-Out courses.
To find out how to enroll in the 2017 Inside-Out Instructor Training institutes, visit: http://www.insideoutcenter.org/training.html