ABSTRACT
This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book examines the enterprise of teaching and learning alongside incarcerated students. It offers a realistic appraisal of how very challenging that enterprise is. The book argues that higher education in prison programs’ entrance requirements produce marginalization and social stratification in facilities where they operate. It discusses issue with programs whose expressed goals are to rehabilitate individuals, arguing that higher education in prison should be a political act that prepares students to change the communities to which they’re returning. The book considers the broader social, historical, and educational contexts of the enterprise of engaging in higher education in prison. Educational programming at its best creates spaces of humanity and dignity that invite incarcerated scholars to breathe, build community with one another, and to produce and create.
