PRISON EDUCATION
Beyond Prisons partners with Chicago-based organizations providing educational opportunities to people incarcerated in Illinois’ prisons and jails.
We partner with the Prison+Neighborhood Arts/Education Project (PNAP) on the following initiatives:
Think Tank at Logan Prison 2024-2025: We explored how individuals and communities can develop platforms to tell their stories and shape new futures. Students worked on writing and telling their own stories. We aim to curate public presentations of these stories.
Think Tank at Stateville Prison 2017-2024: Through in-depth research, policy analysis, and advocacy, alongside creative cultural projects, we worked to transform the material and ideological conditions created by carceral logics. We sought to make key interventions and offer critical insights to the broader movement to end mass-incarceration from within the prison-industrial-complex.
Mixed Enrollment Courses at Stateville Prison: Outside undergraduate students from UChicago and inside PNAP/University Without Walls students came together for a quarter of learning, dialogue and knowledge building across the prison wall.
Research Support for Incarcerated Students/Scholars
A team of trained student volunteers provides research support to incarcerated students/scholars who request information via community partners and prison education programs. Our volunteer team of students fulfill requests to help incarcerated students complete homework assignments, writing projects, and creative work.
Writing as Healing Workshops
We organize workshops to provide community feedback to incarcerated authors. In these workshops, students and community members are invited to review writings by incarcerated authors and give written feedback.