About Inside-Out
The Inside-Out Center
International Headquarters of The Inside-Out Prison Exchange Program
Social Change Through Transformative Education
The Inside-Out Prison Exchange Program®
The Inside-Out Prison Exchange Program® is an educational program with an innovative pedagogical approach tailored to facilitate dialogue across difference. It originated as a means of bringing together campus-based students with incarcerated students for a semester-long course held in a prison, jail, or other correctional setting. While those core Inside-Out Prison Exchange courses have been replicated across the United States and in multiple countries since its inception in 1997, the program has expanded into a variety of other forms of educational and community-based programming. It also has grown into an international network of trained faculty, students, alumni, think tanks, higher education and correctional administrators, and other stakeholders actively engaged with, and deeply committed to, social justice issues.
The Inside-Out Praxis
The Inside-Out praxis is grounded in the belief that our society is strengthened when higher education/learning is made widely accessible and, at the same time, when it allows participants to encounter each other as equals, often across profound social barriers. The practice of bringing incarcerated (inside) and non-incarcerated (outside) people together for engaged and informed dialogue allows for transformative learning experiences that invite participants to take leadership in addressing crime, justice, and other issues of social concern. The Inside-Out pedagogy and methodology create these collaborative, creative contexts.
Mission Statement
Education in which we are able to encounter each other, especially across profound social barriers, is transformative and allows problems to be approached in new and different ways. Inside-Out’s mission is to create opportunities for people inside and outside of prison to have transformative learning experiences that emphasize collaboration and dialogue, inviting them to take leadership in addressing vital issues of social justice.
Vision Statement
We believe that, by studying together and working on issues of crime, justice, and related social concerns, those of us inside and outside of prison can catalyze the kinds of changes that will make our communities more inclusive, just, humane, and socially sustainable.
Problem Statement
Higher education and corrections are among the most powerful institutions in the world today. Yet, both have limitations in their ability to foster just and humane social realities. Individuals in both systems can often feel alienated, objectified, and pessimistic about the possibility of social change.
In higher education, there has long been a focus on individual achievement and a growing emphasis on professional development, wherein the primary goal is to help a student secure employment after graduation. When the focus of an education is on individual and professional achievement alone, students can find themselves ill-equipped to become participants in a democratic society. Furthermore, students graduating from college are often unprepared to think critically about social systems in which they are embedded, and they lack the skills to engage with people across social and cultural differences.
In many parts of the world, prison populations are growing at a pace faster than the general population. There are an astounding 2.1 million people behind bars in the United States alone, the nation with the highest incarceration rate in the world. The cost of punishing and containing individuals is more than purely financial, however. Democratic societies suffer from the lost talents of those who spend years of their lives behind bars, as well as the voices of those who could contribute to civil society. Inclusion of these voices is all the more important, given that those who are incarcerated are disproportionately people who come from minority and economically distressed communities.
The Inside-Out Center
The Inside-Out Center, based at Temple University in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, is the international hub of The Inside-Out Prison Exchange Program®. The Center serves as the focal point for maintaining, growing, and disseminating the program’s vision, values, and methods, and provides the administrative nucleus for the program’s activities. In addition to carrying out an active schedule of public speaking, media coordination, and information sharing, the Center conducts the program’s week long International Instructor Training Institutes, alternative programs for other venues and situations, and a variety of support initiatives for both Inside-Out faculty and alumni.
The Essence of Inside-Out
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