Abstract
This chapter aims to draw a connection between epistemic injustice and higher education in prison (HEP), motivated by the corresponding beliefs that HEP is a concrete application of epistemic injustice and that the theoretical framework of epistemic injustice provides a powerful justification for HEP. More specifically, the ways in which philosophers describe the harms of epistemic injustice and how they may be counteracted correspond to some of the benefits of HEP as understood by practitioners and students. A close look at the work of the relevant philosophers, practitioners, and students reveals that they often discuss the same phenomena in different terms with different objectives. This chapter will demonstrate that epistemic injustice is common in prison settings and that HEP provides at least a partial antidote. In doing so, it will show that the benefits associated with counteracting epistemic injustice can aid HEP practitioners and students in validating HEP as a tool to help right a social wrong inflicted on incarcerated men and women.
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Notes
- 1.
This chapter pertains to liberal arts college programs in prison. HEP takes many forms, of which liberal arts is one. I do not claim that liberal arts HEP programs exclusively provide the benefits enumerated in this chapter, nor that they do so more or less effectively than other types of HEP programs.
- 2.
I say ‘the harms of’ epistemic injustice rather than simply ‘epistemic injustice’ in order to leave open the question whether incarcerated people deserve to be treated in the ways that characterise epistemic injustice. Strictly speaking, if it is deserved then the treatment should not necessarily be described as injustice without additional argument. It is beyond the scope of this chapter to examine whether the treatment is deserved and to pose that additional argument. Nevertheless, the characteristic features of epistemic injustice are experienced by many incarcerated people and the harms resulting from those features can be counteracted by HEP, as this chapter will argue. For convenience I will use the term ‘epistemic injustice’ throughout to mean ‘the features of epistemic injustice.’
- 3.
My focus is on American adult state prisons, as opposed to jails, immigration detention centers, juvenile centers, or military detention centers.
- 4.
- 5.
Other forms of communication, such as writing, may also result in testimonial injustice.
- 6.
SCI-Graterford closed in 2018 and was replaced by SCI-Phoenix in the same location.
- 7.
I am not claiming there is in fact a sufficient wealth of such resources.
- 8.
While it is beyond the scope of this chapter to explore in detail the potential broader social ramifications of HEP, I gesture toward some promising connections.
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McGloin, D. (2022). Epistemic Injustice and College in Prison: How Liberal Arts Education Strengthens Epistemic Agency. In: Harmes, M.K., Harmes, B., Harmes, M.A. (eds) Histories and Philosophies of Carceral Education . Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-86830-7_9
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