The JCI Prison Scholars Program

Tag: in the news

  • New Partnership with the University of Baltimore

    New Partnership with the University of Baltimore

    UB_Logo_H_BLUETwo months ago, the Attorney General Lorretta Lynch and the Secretary of Education Arne Duncan came to Jessup to announce a plan to offer Pell Grants to some prisoners again. They gave us until October 2nd to find a university partner to offer credit-bearing programs.

    I’m very pleased to announce that the University of Baltimore has applied to the Department of Education to offer degrees at Jessup Correctional Institution: a BA in Community Studies and Civic Engagement, and a BA in Human Services Administration, starting in Fall of 2016. We hope to enroll a cohort of 20-30 students, starting with eligible members of the JCI Prison Scholars Program!

    There’s a lot of work to be done between now and next September, and it’s still possible that the Department of Education might refuse UB’s application. But I am bursting with pride in our students at Jessup for making this possible. At the University of Baltimore, it is our own Andrea Cantora who led the effort and will be shepherding the credit-bearing courses into being. Dr. Cantora came to us with plenty of experience working in prisons, but in her criminal justice courses she saw students who are deeply curious and hard-working taking classes without credit or recognition, and so she’s put an immense amount of time and effort into giving them what they deserve!

  • Warren “Renaissanz Rzen” Hynson: Art Show at MICA

    Warren “Renaissanz Rzen” Hynson: Art Show at MICA

    Warren Hynson, who works under the name Renaissanz Rzen, began painting after being inspired by the work of his fellow prison artists. His vibrant acrylic portraits of inmates help tell the story of his own struggle and the struggles of his comrades in exile. The exhibition took place in the Rosenberg Gallery, 2nd Floor of the Brown Center at the Maryland Institute College of Art, Wednesday, October 1-Tuesday, October 14. The reception on Friday, October 3 included a gallery talk by muralist, painter and outsider art authority Dr. Bob Hieronimus.

    Click on the pictures to enlarge.
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  • Rehabilitation vs. Retribution vs. Liberation, Part I: The Context of Violence

    Rehabilitation vs. Retribution vs. Liberation, Part I: The Context of Violence

    "Geese are Taking Over" by Fred Dunn (via Flickr)
    “Geese are Taking Over” by Fred Dunn (via Flickr)

    Everyone in the program was pretty excited to see a couple of our instructors, Drew Leder and Mikita Brottman, featured in an article – a cover article no less – in the Baltimore City Paper this week. It’s also wonderful to see some of our students, like Mr. Hardy and Mr. Fitzgerald, being named and given a voice, even if the Department of Corrections still reserves the right to restrict who may speak to reporters. And the article did a fine job of capturing the variety of those specific voices, rather than presenting the incarcerated men as an undifferentiated mass of “prisoners” – several of the unnamed students were immediately recognizable, just from the way Mr. Woods reproduced their cadences and attitudes on the page. One of our goals is to help humanize incarcerated individuals to the wider world – among the first questions we get from new people we tell about the program is usually some variation on “aren’t you scared?” (no) – and painting such a nuanced portrait of some of our classes is something a journalist is far better at than we philosophers

    But, since I am a philosopher, I wanted to talk a bit about the philosophy that I bring to teaching in and helping to coordinate the program, with respect to one of the issues that the article raises.

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  • City Paper Feature Article

    Our founder Drew Leder and one of our faculty, Mikita Brottman, are featured in a City Paper feature article this week! Congrats to them, and check out the article!

    (Though, to be fair, to get to our classrooms we actually cross a yard with quite a wide expanse of sky framed by razor wire!)

     

     

  • Prison Philosophy Teaching at the Daily Nous

    The Daily Nous put up a nice discussion of teaching philosophy in prisons the other day. Drew Leder, Joshua Miller, and I were interviewed for it, in addition to some folks from other programs. All the bits except the questions to me are worth a read!