Teaching Ethics and Moral Philosophy in Prison, Part 1
By: Jacob Baker
Tags: Moral Philosophy, Prison Education, Ethics, Prison, Prison Reform

Image courtesy of Utah Department of Corrections

I recently began teaching social ethics and moral philosophy at Utah State Prison through Salt Lake Community College’s Prison Education Program. This is a program in which qualifying inmates can take courses toward a General Studies Associate’s Degree, which puts them on good footing to earn a degree from SLCC once they are released.

I’ve been assigned a class from the men’s general population. I have about 20 guys in the class. Most are white, 3 are Latino, 1 is Samoan, and one is black. The majority have never taken a college course before.

It’s a challenging experience in the sense that they literally challenge everything I say. This also makes it an intellectually rich experience (from my viewpoint, of course, though it seems from the feedback that I’ve received that they feel the same), although it’s incredibly exhausting since I get to the prison in the evening after teaching all day at a university. They all seem hungry for this stuff and enjoy arguing with me and each other. The only heated arguments I’ve had to moderate are between the Christians and the atheists (the few Buddhists or pagans haven’t jumped in much as of yet).

I haven’t asked any of them why they are there and for how long, and none of them have volunteered any of this information. I have a human curiosity of course, but have figured it is not my place to inquire, and would serve no real pedagogical purpose anyway. I said on the first day that they would be free to share any personal experience or perspective, and there has been some of that.

Most of them are affable and curious and engaging. If it weren’t for their all white-clothing and the look and feel of the class room being obviously inside a prison, it would feel like an average night class for working adults.

The prison structure itself is depressing and I never look forward each week to navigating all the security checkpoints and making my way into the bowels of the gray, stark, metal, and concrete complex framed by barbed wire, guard towers, rooms with bars and handcuffs, sliding electronic metal doors, and guards. Just the look and feel of the prison itself tells you that that this place is designed to keep inmates from leaving and that they will suffer while they are at it. The aesthetic communicates that any personal improvement and rehabilitation are accidental at best.

As mentioned, I’ve only been doing this for a few weeks, but perhaps the main thing that stands out is their willingness to consider other perspectives. Not just any perspective (see Christians vs. Atheists) but various ways at looking at moral dilemmas. They are good at mulling things over, turning them over in their minds, playing with ideas in the most intellectual sense of that verb. This is no doubt at least in part due to the long periods of meditation and thought that forced confinement generates in extreme disproportion.

The only time I felt uneasy was when one of them asked me what I thought of prisons generally. In my mind’s eye (and somewhat hyperbolically) I can see all of them leaning forward intently, preparing to weigh what I would say next as acceptable or not. I said that I was still educating myself about prisons and prison reform, but it seemed to me that prisons, like the death penalty, were instruments of revenge and punishment, and nothing else. To my relief, they appeared satisfied with this response.