Every Tuesday night, 16 students gather and discuss criminal justice and their coursework as they sit on rolling chairs in a circle with their professor. They take notes and engage in thoughtful conversation for 2½ hours.
It’s a normal night class — except it’s at the Todd Road Jail and half of the students are inmates.
The class, taught by Schannae Lucas of California Lutheran University, is the first college class inside a Ventura County jail for both incarcerated and traditional students.
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Lucas, an associate professor of criminology and criminal justice, worked for more than two years to bring the Inside-Out Prison Exchange Program to the jail near Santa Paula with funding from various university departments. CLU is one of five California colleges participating in Inside-Out. Traditional students are called outside students and incarcerated students are called inside students.
“It’s a way of helping outsiders understand what the inside is like,” said Miguel Viveros, an inside student in the class. “I’m really glad we can help them, I’m really glad that they can see the other side of the fence. ... I want to try to educate people from my perspective.”
Inside-Out was launched in 1997 at Temple University to bring traditional college students and inmates together as peers for learning and dialogue to break down social barriers, help students find and value their voices, and jump-start inmates’ interest in continuing their educations.
The long-term goals are to reduce the likelihoodthe inmates will return to jail and to inspire all the students to address social concerns related to crime, justice and inequality.
“They see themselves as equals and they learn from one another,” Lucas said. “Their ideas are more alike than different. It’s a beautiful thing.”
The class, “Examining Social, Crime and Justice Issues,” is held in the heart of the jail, inside and outside students use golf pencils to take notes during class and students are on a first-name-only basis with each other.
Other than that, it’s like a normal class. Outside of the weekly class session, the students are reading textbooks and writing papers.
On the inside
Although vocational and high school courses are available to Ventura County inmates, this is the first college class and the only program where inmates learn alongside traditional students.
It is also one of the only Inside-Out programs that provide incarcerated students with college credit, Lucas said. Most of the incarcerated students are taking the class for credit.
“They’ve never offered anything like this,” said Viveros, who has been at the Todd Road Jail for a year. “I went to college. ... This is a really big deal. I feel good getting this opportunity.”
Viveros has white pieces of paper he uses as place markers in the three textbooks he’s required to read for the course. There are so many pieces of white paper, he said, because the texts have really had an impact on him.
“It’s helped me a lot to get different exposure other than what I’m living here,” Viveros said. “There’s a lot of people that have it way worse.”
The inside students filled out applications and were interviewed by Lucas and jail staff members so they could hand-pick those who would be the best fit for the class and the classroom setting. Viveros said he enjoys interacting with the outside students and that they offer different perspectives, but are always respectful.
“To me, they are just classmates. They don’t see us lower,” Viveros said.
Wesley Hall said he went into the class making some assumptions about the CLU students he would be meeting.
“It’s been inspirational how much everyone wants to be a part of the solution,” Hall said. “They have more experience than I thought, I thought most were going to be privileged college students but we have more in common than we have different.”
For both Hall and Viveros, the first day of their new class back in January was a little nerve-wracking.
“We played two truths and a lie,” Hall said. “I picked out all the outside students’ lies right away. ... I thought everyone (on the outside) was trying to be a lawyer or a cop, but I was the one being ignorant. They’ve all been really accepting and genuine.”
Cecil Argue, an inmate programs manager with the Ventura County Sheriff’s Office, said the course started with nine inside students, but two dropped the class after being overwhelmed by the workload.
The inside students are expected to comply with all jail rules to remain in the class. So far, Argue said, there haven’t been any instances where behavior has been a problem. Most of the students have been a part of a different jail program before, Argue said, including culinary and canine training programs.
On the outside
For the CLU students, who are all majoring in criminal justice, the course provides an opportunity to learn firsthand about the issues they have been studying. Some are double-majoring in psychology or sociology, according to the university.
“The first time I went, I was really nervous. When we first had class with the insiders, the jail officials told us all the bad things that could happen,” said Lindsay Voss, an outside student. “They were nervous. We were nervous. Once they started talking, it felt totally normal.
“I’m sad every time I leave. No one ever says, ‘I’m sad to leave jail,’ but I am,” Voss said.
Voss, a junior, said the class packs more of a punch being taught in the jail and wouldn’t carry the same weight if it were taught in a traditional lecture hall.
“I think having them tell us their experiences and just being able to talk about it with people that aren’t necessarily like us and seeing their perspective on these (topics) makes it even better,” Voss said.
Voss and her eight outside counterparts had to go through an interview process to be accepted into the class. Then they had to get cleared by the jail and undergo background checks before the course began. They also have to drive to the jail once a week for the class, and get there about 40 minutes early for “intake.” They often don’t get home until 9:30 on class nights, Voss said. But that’s not a deterrent for her.
“I wish I could take it again,” Voss said. “It’s like a life-changing class. ... I look forward to Tuesdays. I don’t think anyone in college says their favorite day of the week is Tuesday.”
In one Tuesday night class, the students broke into smaller groups of equal parts inside and outside students. Lucas said this is something that happens often. The outside students read their daily journals to the inside students to show that while their lives are different, there are commonalities.
“For our criminology students, they are all going into the criminal justice field and they are going to be working with those who are on probation, parole, who were formerly incarcerated,” Lucas said. “They are going to be working with this population in some degree. The idea is if we can allow them to take courses and engage and really begin to humanize those who have been labeled in society.”
Looking ahead
More than 30,000 inside and outside students have taken classes internationally as part of the Inside-Out Program in a variety of subjects, not just criminal justice, Lucas said. Lucas said she is working to add classes taught by faculty in a range of disciplines to the Ventura County program and hopes to be back a year from now teaching a new set of students.
Educational programs in correctional facilities have proved to lower the recidivism rate, according to some studies. Inmates who participate in a correctional education program had a 43 percent lower chance of returning to jail than those who did not, according to a study by the RAND Corp., a research organization. The odds of obtaining employment post-release among inmates who participated in correctional education was 13 percent higher than for those who did not, according to the same study.
Lori Pompa, founder and executive director of the Inside-Out Prison Exchange Program, said the students who participate in the program not only learn the course material, they learn about themselves.
“People become really passionate not just about crime and justice but passionate about social justice issues,” Pompa said. ”... They want to go forth and make change in the world. Not unlike the young people from Florida. … The cause for that was deeply unfortunate and tragic but sometimes there are moments in people’s lives that push them toward a new way of being and push them toward committing themselves deeply … to righteous work. This is the sort of thing we see all the time.”
Pompa said she got the idea for starting what would later become the Inside-Out Center and the program from an inmate serving a life sentence who suggested expanding what was then a panel to a semester-long course.
“It’s about dialogue and that’s a big part of the program, dialogue across difference,” Pompa said. “Not just the obvious difference but all of the differences between us as human beings. We can break down walls, prison walls or otherwise, if we can get into dialogue about our differences.”
Pompa said although there’s not currently a method of tracking what happens to students who participate, she hopes it can be done in the future. But she said there is a lot of feedback, and that most people — inside, outside and professors — say the class was transformative for them.
Both Hall and Viveros said that when they leave the jail, they want to go back to school and turn their lives around.
“I always loved learning,” Hall said. “This class has made me think I should go back to college and finish. I want to continue this or get started on something else.”
Lucas said that’s one of the end goals for the inside students — to show them what an education could do for them.
“The one thing I wanted to tell them was this specific one course wasn’t going to get them their job. I can’t guarantee when you walk in that you’re going to get a job,” Lucas said. “I can’t guarantee that when you walk out of here, this is going to be the one thing that changes your life. However, I can assure that you will critically think about issues as our outside students do every class and that begins to change your frame of reference in the world we live in.
“What it does for the outsides it will do for the insides,” Lucas said.
