Prisoners go back to school, too

OTTAWA — These students don’t own a laptop or a smart-phone, they don’t have access to the Internet or to expensive research databases, but they are just as keen to learn as any other university student. Because they are not children taking the bus for the first time, students protesting potential tuition hikes or a former MP going to law school, they won’t be featured on tomorrow’s front page. However, their story should be told as we pursue our yearly ritual of celebrating education. These students are prisoners.

Their nutritional habits are not a secret, and a few months ago, the Canadian federal prison investigator provided us with a report about violence in prisons that many newspapers highlighted. But, what do we hear from the prisoners? Not much, if anything at all. At this time of year, there are hundreds of prisoners going back to school too. They are trying to make something good out of their futures, but we are not hearing from them. Many still believe a ‘loss of voice’ is the price to pay for being behind bars, but shouldn’t we consider their progress, hear about their successes like all other humans who have been given a second chance? I believe they deserve a voice, if anything to keep correctional personnel accountable for ensuring the rights they do have.

I recently came back from a trip to San Quentin State Prison in California. I was an invited lecturer to an introductory journalism class. Far from my usual high-tech classroom with podium and computer, I was left with my papers and a white board to teach radio journalism to 18 inmates that would be my students for two afternoons. They are the ‘lucky’ inmates to take part in the Prison University Project (PUP) which supports more than 300 student-inmates a year working towards an Associate’s arts degree (granted by Patton University), taking preparatory courses to access higher education or working on transfer courses required at other California Universities they hope to attend if and when they get out of prison.

When I met my host, professor William Drummond of the University of California, Berkeley at a conference in June, I honestly thought he was out of his mind when he discussed incarceration during a round table on new media challenges, but I quickly realized he had a point. Not all prisoners have the power, influence and money of Conrad Black and Martha Stewart to write their memoirs behind bars and be heard, not to mention the fact that their stories are much different than those of the murderers with whom I have shook hands. Shouldn’t prisoners have an outlet too?

The San Quentin News is an inmate-produced publication that has been around since the early 1940s and has been recently made available online thanks to outside collaborators. It is an example of how prisoners can be heard, share their struggles, but also their successes. The front page of the July 2012 issue boasted the success of 50 inmates who graduated as part of PUP. Shouldn’t this be celebrated by all? This is an achievement and a sign that there is hope behind bars. When have Canadians ever heard of a critical mass of inmates earning a degree in a common ceremony? Sure, there is the odd feature about a particular inmate being granted a degree, but this is usually when they are up for parole or they have a so-called "reputation". What about those we don’t know? In Canada inmates are required to pay for their own post-secondary education and they take their courses by correspondence. A few programs have been designed to give regular students a prison experience by sharing a classroom with inmates through something called the in and out program, but we have nothing close to what the Americans have across the border and we are supposed to be the progressive ones!

Luckily we do have some evidence of an ongoing penal press that could be used as a way to hear about prisoners and their issues such as prison violence, overcrowding and malnutrition, but wouldn’t be nice to hear about this before it is too late? Did you know that there are more than 6 million inmates and people on parole in the United States? That is twice the size of Los Angeles, the second largest city in the United States. San Quentin State Prison alone has a little fewer than 5,000 inmates, although the number varies depending to whom you speak, and in Canada we arguably have more than 35,000 prisoners, according to a recent Correctional services report.

As we enter this ritual of "back to school" festivities, and as students of the "free world" fight issues of tuition, I think we should consider providing those less fortunate with hope for a better future, one that we can share together. This may be idealistic, but I must admit that among the many things that were going through my mind, as I was teaching the inmates, the most important thought to me was that ‘these men have potential inside or outside these walls’ and beyond their crimes, they have talents, they are human and for that reason alone teaching them how to tell their stories is worthwhile and fighting to give them a voice is the right thing to do.

Geneviève A. Bonin is an assistant professor, department of communication, University of Ottawa.