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Journal of Human Services Fall/2016

81

Review of College for Convicts:

The Case for Higher Education in American Prisons

Shoshana D. Kerewsky, Deanna Chappell Belcher

Book Review

With College for Convicts: The Case for Higher Education in American Prisons,

Christopher Zoukis (2014) enters the ongoing national debate on rehabilitation versus

punishment for people convicted of crimes. Specifically, he argues that prison education

programs benefit both convicts and society. His particular areas of focus, as well as the questions

left unexplored, provide a basis for useful critical discussion with students, educators, and

administrators.

One of the book’s chief assets is its accessibility. Human services students who are not

following the ongoing and intensifying national debate about prison reform (for example, who do

not know that prisoners once had access to Pell Grants, then did not, and now might again) will

find Zoukis’s (2014) overview helpful. The book includes an historical overview of prison

education, a discussion of barriers to education faced by both individual convicts and prison

systems, examples of successful programs and partnerships, and resources. His practical

suggestions include approaches used in other countries as well as appendices providing concrete

information, such as sources for prisoners to obtain free and inexpensive books. Zoukis

incorporates references to a great many studies on issues such as the relationship between lack of

education and recidivism, the cost of education versus reincarceration, and the impacts of

educational attainment on both prison functioning and community crime rates. This material will

be extremely helpful for human services students wrestling with these ideas for the first time.

Since human services students and professionals may work with prisoners and people with

previous convictions, both in detention or transition settings and in the general client population,

their increased awareness of these issues will provide an important context for their clients’

experiences and needs. The book should also prove useful for educators and administrators

considering partnerships with prison education programs and developing relevant field study

placements for students.

Zoukis (2014) is currently incarcerated; his book is likely to move and inspire college

students to consider their relative privilege and to challenge their assumptions about people who

are incarcerated. In this regard, the book also serves as a personal, humanizing document, both

through Zoukis’s account of his own story and those of other incarcerated people (including

older people and those serving life sentences). These sections bring the statistics and Zoukis’s

arguments for prisoner education alive.

Zoukis (2014) sometimes loses this personal connection in paragraphs and sections of

dense statistical reportage. Instructors may need to help students find a good balance between

important questions, such as how a community benefits economically when it educates former

offenders, and students’ recognition of shared humanity with the people being discussed.

Students with past convictions may seek entry to human services programs in order to

contribute to the community or help those similar to themselves; Paulson, Groves, and Hagedorn

(in press) note that community college human services programs may not be permitted to

exclude people with criminal backgrounds from enrollment due to open enrollment admissions

Shoshana D. Kerewsky and Deanna Chappell Belcher, Family & Human Services Program, University of Oregon,

Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Shoshana D. Kerewsky at .

Journal of Human Services Fall/2016

82

policies. In their anonymous survey of 90 enrolled college human services students, 1/3 reported

at least one conviction (17 reported misdemeanors; 13 reported felonies). Given the potential

presence of students who are former prisoners in the human services classroom, the instructor’s

active guidance of the discussion will be crucial for maintaining respectful dialogue and a

welcoming attitude. Paulson, Groves, and Hagedorn also provide a useful discussion of human

services programs’ admissions and conduct gatekeeping considerations related to potential

students with a history of convictions. Classroom and faculty/staff conversations may serve as a

productive starting point for discussions regarding goodness of fit for different careers in human

services.

One of the educational partnerships Zoukis (2014) references is the Inside-Out Prison

Exchange Program, which fosters conversation and learning between incarcerated people and

college students. Inside-Out students regularly describe their experiences as life changing and

extremely meaningful. This is not, as Zoukis states, because undergraduates are trained to teach

in correctional institutions, but because they are open to the experience of learning side by side

in a correctional setting in a group composed of half students who are incarcerated and half

traditional college students. The equalization of power and mutual learning is an important

aspect of the Inside-Out program, making it a superb learning experience for human services

students. Being equals with individuals who are incarcerated allows students to see issues of

incarceration and education in a new light. They come to respect and admire their “inside”

classmates, which surprises many of them and inspires them to step outside the mindset of being

a savior whose role is to help or uplift the prisoners. This is an important component of social

justice education and critical thinking for our undergraduates.

Zoukis (2014) is not highly or explicitly critical of the underlying assumptions behind the

denial of education to incarcerated people. It would be useful for instructors to help students

examine the current and historical political forces that have led to the U.S.’s contemporary prison

industrial complex. In this regard, Zoukis may be taught as one component in a constellation of

readings that include Davis’s (2003) Are Prisons Obsolete? and Alexander’s (2012). The New

Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness.

References

Alexander, M. (2012). The new Jim Crow: Mass incarceration in the age of colorblindness.

New York, NY: The New Press.

Davis, A. Y. (2003). Are prisons obsolete? New York, NY: Seven Stories Press.

Paulson, J., Groves, L., and Hagedorn, L. A. (in press). Advocacy in action: Supporting human

services students with a criminal justice history. In S. D. Kerewsky (Ed.), Fitness for the

human services profession: Preliminary explorations Alexandria, VA: Council for

Standards in Human Service Education.

Zoukis, C. (2014). College for convicts: The case for higher education in American prisons.

Jefferson, NC: McFarland