Learning to think outside the box: How a UGA professor is helping to bring higher education to incarcerated populations

When Caroline Young left her career in television advertising, she couldn’t have predicted that her new path would lead her to teaching inmates.

Young is a lecturer in the University of Georgia English department. But she also teaches in another, less traditional setting: Whitworth Women’s Facility, a prison in Hartwell, Georgia. The spark for prison education lit while Young was getting a post doctorate in multimodal experimental pedagogy at the Georgia Institute of Technology. There she encountered one of the founders of Common Good Atlanta, an organization that brings higher education to Georgia’s incarcerated populations, and found out that a mutual friend was the cofounder.

Young’s first work with incarcerated students was at Georgia Tech, where she had her students turn incarcerated students’ poetry into multimodal art.

“I was not prepared for how rewarding it would be for the Georgia Tech students, and that just all made sense because everybody was benefiting and that's where I started feeling this amazing sense of purpose,” Young said. “That is when my whole life started.”

An investment in society

Higher education in prisons provides lifelong benefits to those students. Providing access to higher education is proven to reduce recidivism rates — defined by the National Institute of Justice as “criminal acts that resulted in rearrest, reconviction or return to prison with or without a new sentence during a three-year period following the person's release.” According to Northwestern University, the recidivism rate is 67.8%, but receiving an associate’s degree drops the rate to 14%, a bachelor’s degree drops it to 5.6% and a master’s degree eliminates recidivism.

Despite the proven benefits, higher education in prisons remains largely unimplemented and under-supported. Part of the public’s hesitation comes from a punishment mindset: if people did something wrong, why should they have access to a college education — and a potentially free one at that?

“I honestly think we just live in the most vengeful society in the world,” Young said. “There's bloodlust.”

Abigail Cook, co-campaign manager for Beyond the Box — a Georgia initiative “in support of removing criminal history questions from college applications” — is an activist for bringing higher education to currently and formerly incarcerated populations. Cook was arrested when she was 17, convicted of a felony when she was 18 and put on probation when she was 19. She didn’t have access to educational opportunities while she was incarcerated in a county jail. However, she has since gone on to graduate from Georgia State University, which she actually applied to while still in jail. Cook got released on probation in March 2020, right when the COVID-19 pandemic began and protests about police violence spread across the country.

“I felt the need to get involved in the work in reforming the criminal justice system,” Cook said.

Cook emphasizes the importance of education access as a public safety concern, and a mechanism to decrease recidivism, as the data shows.

“It's a great investment, but the opportunity is rarely given to people,” Cook said. “And then even more than that, the opportunity to educate yourself, once you're released is also really difficult. People are rarely granted access to it.”

Once the opportunity is made available though, the students that participate become invested.

“I've had many of the best teaching experiences I've ever had working with students on the inside, who are so excited to be there, who are unafraid of saying anything wrong,” Eric Lewis, Common Good Atlanta’s director of academics, said. “They're just there to experiment and learn. And it leads to sometimes surprising, sometimes off topic conversations, but it often gets us to those places where college is designed to get students a lot more quickly.”

Banishing the box

One major hindrance to pursuing higher education or employment after being incarcerated is the “felony box,” the question on college and job applications asking whether the applicant has been convicted of a felony. It discourages formerly incarcerated people from completing the applications, as they feel — accurately so — that their odds are tarnished by checking the box. Being excluded from these opportunities can lead people back to crime and back into prison, somewhere familiar to them.

Efforts have been made around the country to remove the box, not just in Georgia. In 1998, Hawaii became the first state to ban the box. Today, 37 states and Washington D.C. have their own laws banning the box, according to the National Employment Law Project. However, many of these laws apply only to public sector jobs. Groups like Beyond the Box are pushing to include the private sector. Studies show that these laws are effective in decreasing repeat offenses and recidivism.

During Cook’s advocacy, Georgia has seen one question regarding criminal history removed and another asked in a new way. Recently, Georgia Representative Gregg Kennard (D-Gwinnett) filed HB 427, on behalf of Beyond the Box, to remove criminal history questions from college applications.

Young fully supports these efforts to destigmatize incarceration and would like to see efforts made by the University System of Georgia to aid currently and formerly incarcerated students, including universally accredited courses and on-campus resources.

“We have offices on campus for disability resources, we have offices for first gen students … shouldn't it be just as normal as having an office … for reentry?” Young said.

Laws banning the box have widespread implications — especially considering that, as of 2015, over 70 million Americans had some type of criminal history, according to the Brennan Center for Justice, and could potentially be affected by these types of questions on applications. Georgia had the fourth most prisoners of any state in 2021, according to the Department of Justice’s Bureau of Justice Statistics, despite having the eighth highest total population. The 47,010 prisoners accounted for .44% of the state’s population, the 11th highest ratio in the country.

Sharing the knowledge

Young consistently brings her work at Whitworth and at UGA together, just like how she got started at Georgia Tech. One way she recently carried this out culminated in an exhibition - “Art is a form of Freedom” - at the Georgia Museum of Art. Young had her UGA students explore artists from under-represented groups and her Whitworth students write prose and poetry responses, which were displayed alongside the art. Currently, Young is also bringing her two worlds together in her Writing for Social Justice class at UGA.

Young’s goal for the course is “creating a sense of equity for our incarcerated population based on the intellectual and emotional resources that the university has to offer.”

“I feel like there's a lack of information available to the public about education or being incarcerated and the programs that are available and I feel like a lot of that is intentional that that information is not easily accessible,” Marissa Brown, one of Young’s Writing for Social Justice students, said. “I just really wanted to learn more and learn what I can do to help other people.”

The fall 2023 class created a documentary about the history of higher education in Georgia prisons. The final film will serve as a promotion and education tool for Beyond the Box, according to Brown.

During their research and production, the students spoke to formerly incarcerated people who have been impacted by access to higher education.

“We're all just people and we all just want to learn,” Brown said. “We all want to be accepted by society. And it's just cool to hear their side of the story.”

The class also spoke to others involved in bringing higher education to incarcerated populations, including Steve Rowland, a two-time Peabody Award-winning radio documentarian who first became involved in prison education 13 years ago while working on a documentary about modern Shakespeare. During that production, he visited a Shakespeare class for incarcerated men in New York. Rowland has since taught his own Shakespeare classes to incarcerated men, including in Seattle.

“What I was hoping to do was to give them some help, be part of giving them a reason to wake up in the morning and not kill themselves,” Rowland said. “And to actually start spreading education and kindness and morals and ethics to the other prisoners and becoming leaders.”

Now, Rowland is involved with the organization Time Out of Joint, which conducts high school and college workshops across the country led by former prisoners. Their goal is to conduct “powerful online workshops using Shakespeare’s plays as platforms to consider the power of education, issues of inequity, power, family, forgiveness, redemption, honor and more,” according to their website. Rowland has also been involved in creating a documentary for TOOJ: “Time Out of Joint: Prison Reflections on Shakespeare.”

Struggles and successes

Prisons are virtually nothing like a typical classroom, which forces Young and others in her position to readjust how they approach education in these settings. Many students work toward degrees, which they may finish while incarcerated or at another higher education institution after they’re released.

“Working in a prison, there's nothing but challenges,” Young said. “I'm all about slowing down. And I'm all about things that force you to have creative solutions to problems. And it's such an unpredictable place to teach.”

For one thing, Common Good Atlanta doesn’t run in semesters like college typically does. Not only has this impacted Young’s classes at Whitworth, but also at UGA, as projects involving both types of classes can span multiple years.

“I just make a point to constantly keep everyone in communication after the class is over to let them know what the next phase is, but that's worked out so far for the most part,” Young said. “Everyone still seems invested, even though they don't get the ‘ta-da, it’s all finished!’”

Many classes available to incarcerated populations are humanities-based, such as literature, critical thinking and writing, history and even dance. In recent semesters, Whitworth has seen courses like food writing or American history through land acquisition, according to Young. Rowland believes humanities education is vital for everyone, especially prisoners.

“[It’s] education that touches the soul, and it's education that requires the person to bring themselves to the conversation, see themselves in situations and to examine human nature,” Rowland said.

Rowland has also faced challenges in his work: One of his classes was shut down after the prison he taught at shifted to focus only on earning associate degrees. The prison asked Rowland, who has an MBA, to teach an accounting class, but he refused.

“I'm interested in the human soul and the human experience, and I'm interested in society, and I'm interested in prison reform,” Rowland said.

However, there are many moments of success and fulfillment. Recently, the collaborative art exhibition between Young’s UGA and Common Good Atlanta classes won the Silver Medal award from the Southeastern Museums Conference. This project was an example of the multi-year, multi-class format.

Rowland has also seen his share of breakthrough moments. Part of TOOJ’s workshops is Prison Monologues, written by the formerly incarcerated participants. Rowland and his collaborators have students of all races and backgrounds perform the monologues. This encourages the students to practice empathy and see the world from a different perspective.

“It's letting that [student] step into his shoes for five minutes and feel what it might be like to be in that position,” Rowland said.

What comes next?

Despite many of her classes’ projects spanning multiple semesters, Young plans to have her UGA class finish their film this semester. Its completion will just precede Georgia’s 2024 legislative session, where Cook hopes to see HB 427 passed into law.

“I have humble goals, and I’m a patient human being,” Young said. “I would very much like to see this bill passed.”

Young hopes USG will take a more progressive approach to higher education in prisons as other states, like New York, have.

“The professors are willing to do it,” Young said. “There are people willing to teach. It's just getting USG organized.”

Similarly, Cook hopes to see an increase in availability of degree-providing programs for inmates.

“It's so necessary, it's crazy,” Cook said.