Inside-Out: What the World Needs Now

Abstract

The Inside-Out Prison Exchange Program offers a powerful tool for overcoming dehumanization, the problem that Philip Zimbardo¹ has characterized as the root of all evil. Although the precise political, economic, social, or other motivations that impel substandard treatment of any segment of a nation’s population may vary, the classification of that group as undeserving of the full rights and moral consideration due to all human beings underlies such abuse. Inside-Out, by bringing college students together with a like number of incarcerated students for a semester-long course held behind prison walls, has significant potential for countering such flawed thinking. A pedagogical innovation may sound like a modest vehicle for addressing such devastating atrocities and extreme denials of human rights as genocide, ethnic cleansing, crimes against humanity, abuse of prisoners of war, acts of torture, slavery, or apartheid. Although it offers what one member of the Inside-Out Think Tank at Graterford Prison described as “the slow or scenic route” to change, rather than an immediate remedy, the world can benefit greatly from any movement in the humanizing direction that this program provides.