Often denied access to the books and materials they need, incarcerated students rely on mutual aid to succeed.
Kenneth Butler, an inside-outside prison education training coach who grew up in the Watts neighborhood of Los Angeles, spent 15 years incarcerated prior to his release from prison in June 2021. He’s since implemented reentry programs and conducted recidivism research in Uganda while on a Fulbright Fellowship, and he has served as a mentor to formerly incarcerated youth and young adults in Southern California.
Before all that, Butler was part of the incarcerated cohort that came up with the idea of starting a B.A. program through Pitzer College inside the California Rehabilitation Center (CRC), a men’s state prison in Norco, California.
Butler, who is also a graduate of Norco College’s prison education program — known now as the Rising Scholars Program — told me in an interview earlier this year that he initially enrolled in Pitzer courses inside the CRC without earning any credentials. He and about 15 others successfully advocated for what became Pitzer’s Inside-Out Pathway-to-BA program.
That was a little more than five years ago. Butler, who is now in his early fifties, earned his bachelor’s degree. He took classes that counted toward the degree while in the CRC, and he finished his final semester on campus at Pitzer, which is part of the Southern California-based Claremont Colleges network.
Prior to his release from prison, Butler and his fellow incarcerated scholars relied on support from one another to persevere, excel academically, and transform themselves and their relations with others. The long-held tradition of mutual aid among imprisoned people was a critical part of their educational experience.
Butler said he and other students focused on “being there for each other” while pursuing degrees. “We created study groups,” he said. “And actually, we even created a senator position at the school.”
The “senator position” Butler was referring to was made possible by the fact that incarcerated people who were enrolled in the Inside-Out program won representation in the Pitzer student senate, thereby getting to participate in undergraduate self-governance.
Incarcerated students also meet college students from outside the prison in person as part of the Inside-Out curriculum.
“So that’s a game changer,” Butler said. “Being able to sit in the classroom with traditional college students and realizing that you’re as smart, if not smarter, than some of these college students, I think that gave us a boost and morale to see that we were able to hold our own inside [a] traditional college class.”
I taught a class inside the California Rehabilitation Center back in 2019 within what was at that time called the Norco College Prison Education Program. In writing this article I reached out to some of my former students from that class in addition to other interviewees to hear more about the culture of mutual aid among incarcerated students.
Romarilyn Ralston, founding senior director for the Justice Education Center for Claremount Colleges, taught inside the CRC and also observed the dynamic firsthand. During an interview over the phone earlier this year, she told me the imprisoned undergraduates she teaches are “not only a cohort of intellectuals … They are a brotherhood, and they refer to themselves as a brotherhood.”
The diverse group will often meet outside of class to work on assignments and discuss course material, she said. Some live in the same dormitory inside the prison and can talk regularly, while others connect when they meet in spaces like the recreation field.
“They are ambassadors for the program,” Ralston said about incarcerated students. “They talk the program up. They share the information that …