Demystifying Prisons Through the Use of Experiential Learning

• NCJ Number: 233833
• Journal: Corrections Compendium Volume: 35 Issue: 2 Dated: Summer 2010 Pages: 1-5,19,20
• Author(s): Hayden P. Smith; Barbara A. Koons-Witt; Benjamin Meade
• Date Published: 2010
• Length: 7 pages
• Publication Format: Article
• Publication Type: Report (Study/Research)
• Language: English
• Country: United States of America

Annotation

This study examined the usefulness of having students in upper-level criminology courses tour prisons as a means of illustrating classroom materials and encouraging students to think critically about prisons and inmates.

Abstract

The student tours of a women's prison and a mental health prison facility for men, both located in South Carolina, generated perceptions among the students about the dynamics and structures of power, i.e., the power of stereotyping gender, the powerlessness of the mentally ill, and the students' own sense of powerlessness as "minority" outsiders subject to the direction, knowledge, and experience of the correctional officers, inmates, and other correctional stakeholders who led the tours. The professor should guide these observations and experiences of power dynamics and structure in the correctional world toward a socio-cultural, historical, and political context for corrections. The students should be prepared for this before the tour and then discuss related experiences after the tour. This enables students to enter into the complexities of the perspectives and interactions of the prison milieu, inmates and staff, and among inmates. The research involved undergraduate students in one of two criminology and criminal justice courses at the University of South Carolina's Columbia campus. Participants were students in two upper-level criminology and criminal justice elective classes during the spring semester of 2008. The classes were entitled "Women and Crime" and "Criminal Justice and Public Health." Both classes toured separate prison facilities, each relevant to the particular course content being taught. The study used a qualitative, grounded analysis of students' reflections submitted to the professor following the prison tour. All students responses were submitted electronically and merged into a master database that was used for analytical purposes. 27 references