St. Joseph's University's Inside-Out Program

"Inside-Out classes have given me the ability to further my education, while also allowing me to see that my incarceration doesn’t make me who I am. Without these classes, I would never have found my ability to gain knowledge, as these classes brought things to the front of my thought process that I had closed off."

Keith, Inside Student, SCI Chester, Fall 2024.

Saint Joseph University's (SJU) Inside-Out Prison Exchange program works to break down walls by bringing 15 campus students inside a correctional facility for a class with 15 students who live in a correctional facility. Housed in SJU’s Faith Justice Institute, Inside-Out courses are considered immersion service-learning courses for all students and all students are eligible for credit.

Our first Inside-Out course was offered in sociology in 2008. In the sixteen years since then, SJU has offered one or two Inside-Out courses per semester. The courses are often team-taught and include: “Dimensions of Freedom” (English/Philosophy), “Life and Its Boundaries: Death and Dying, Inside and Out” (English/Philosophy), “Race, Class, and Gender” (English) and “Race, Media, and Citizenship” (Sociology/Communication).

Philadelphia jails, the federal prison in downtown Philadelphia and three state prisons are community partners with Saint Joseph’s. SCI Chester, and SCI Phoenix (formerly Graterford) are within driving distance of St. Joe's, but we have also worked with SCI Waymart –– a three-hour drive away. We offered the bulk of the Waymart class on Zoom and brought campus students to Waymart on two immersive Saturday visits. Zoom courses –– which began during the pandemic –– work with the same interactive model as face-to-face classes but have the additional challenge of all of the inside students on one Zoom camera.

Approximately 500 inside students have completed Inside-Out courses with St. Joe's. While all students who have a GED are eligible for credit, in the Philadelphia jails, students can apply for the course without a GED or equivalent. This creates an opportunity for people who have previously had a negative educational encounter to experience a different kind of education vis-à-vis Inside-Out — and then perhaps continue their education through other programs.

Campus graduates of Inside-Out have attended law school at American, Drexel and George Washington University, the University of Oregon and others. Additionally, graduates have served through the Jesuit Volunteer Corp, City Year Philadelphia and Network (the Washington, D.C. advocacy group), as well as pursued social work degrees at the University of Pennsylvania and teaching degrees at Temple. I-O graduates also work at Vanguard, for local attorneys, and for the National Alliance to End Homelessness.

"When I look back on my experience taking an Inside-Out course, I process it as "disruptive." The course disrupted my preconceived notions of what it meant to be a good writer or successful storyteller. It also disrupted larger ideas, like what I thought it meant to be internally free or internally confined ... Maybe we're in the best position to receive when we are sitting across from someone, with nothing in front of us and nothing to prove."

Rachel, Outside Student, Cambria Community Center, Fall 2017.

Tyrone Werts, an Inside-Out alumnus who served 36 years of a life sentence and now works for Inside-Out at Temple University, often speaks about how the prison walls are not just to keep people inside but also to keep the average person outside. By bringing both groups of people together, we advocate for long-term change around mass incarceration and engage in the Jesuit values of accompaniment, cura personalis and the magis.

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