The Prison-Education Connection
An article in today's Chronicle Review covers a surge of scholarly interest in "prison studies." The author does a nice job of capturing key areas of research on this topic, though coverage of work by Bruce Western , Chris Wildeman , Alice Goffman , Nikki Jones , and Devah Pager would have deepened the portrait. For example, a discussion of Goffman's recent ethnography of men in Philadelphia could have illustrated how prison life (and the threat of life in prison) is intimately connected with how daily life--outside prison--is experienced by many of today's young urban men. I just hope educators are paying attention. It's far too easy (and common) for scholars to focus on a single societal institution (like schools) to the exclusion of all others. But anyone committed to democratizing education must connect to the conversation on prison reform. For example, here are two reasons why higher education researchers, practitioners, and policymakers should foll...