Each week of the fall 2017 semester, 14 U-M students in the Inside-Out Prison Exchange Program made the 2.5-hour round trip drive to the Macomb Correctional Facility to attend class with ‘inside’ students at the facility. The Inside-Out Program, initiated at Temple University in 1997, now includes more than 100 correctional and higher education partnerships. PSC Director Jeffrey Morenoff, who teaches the first such class on the Ann Arbor campus, wanted to create a community-centered learning experience focused on crime, justice, prisons, and mass incarceration. By all accounts, the class was a success for students, who commented on how much the interactions and perspectives of their peers, and especially their inside-outside counterparts, contributed to their learning experience. At the closing session of the class, Morenoff said: “For me, every single one of you inside and outside students had to overcome a barrier. It’s very rare as an instructor to see your students go through that transformation. . . . This has been a transformative experience for me.”

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