ABSTRACT
This chapter is perhaps primarily useful for someone who is very early in their experience of teaching in jail or prison. The people who work in jails and prisons are a diverse group who have come to their work for a variety of reasons and have been affected by their time working in jails and prisons in a variety of ways. The prison industrial complex is a vast system of oppression that not only maintains, but creates, segregation and hierarchy among the people it contains. A study conducted by Thomas Carnahan and Sam McFarland out of Western Kentucky University in 2007, however, suggests that selection bias may have been at work here in ways that not examined before. Education in jails and prisons does not come easily, and engaging our students in educational programming is often a struggle, which is a form of resistance. However, Coogan goes on to argue, ignorance of the other benefits no one.
