Recognizing human dignity behind bars: A moral justification for college-in-prison programs

Abstract

There is currently bipartisan support for criminal justice reform in the United States. One reform, recently passed through the Consolidated Appropriations Act/COVID relief package (December 2020), restored need-based, higher educational aid for incarcerated persons. With a resurgence of college-in-prison programs on the horizon, this article joins recent efforts to understand the moral justification of these programs not exclusively in terms of reductions in recidivism rates but in terms of a duty-based recognition of human dignity. It contributes to these efforts by examining the meaning and implications of recognizing human dignity behind bars, contending that the achievements of college-in-prison programs are morally justified insofar as they provide a model for recognizing the human dignity of all incarcerated persons (not just the select few they educate) and thereby spur the transformation of an institution that systematically ignores the role of human dignity in our moral lives.

Clarifying the relationship between mental illness and recidivism using machine learning: A retrospective study

“…Although research shows that many institutions offer mental healthcare on a superficial basis [59], there remains a legal imperative to provide mental health care to incarcerated individuals who need it. Engagement in treatment with a compassionate clinician is one way that incarcerated individuals can begin to rebuild a sense of personal dignity, which can lead to desistance from crime once released [60].…”

Book review: Winston C. Thompson and John Tillson (eds), Pedagogies of Punishment: The Ethics of Discipline in Education

“…The volume contains scant reference to the role of exploitation and dehumanization in society – ‘subpersonhood’ (p. 57) in Charles Mills’ register – whereby members of racially non-dominant communities are viewed as having an ‘inferior schedule of rights and liberties applied to them’ (p. 57) as they are not fully human. We frame this punishing condition as a failure of human dignity, where the ‘intrinsic value of human life’ (Fantuzzo, 2022) is not only left unacknowledged but in fact illustrates Mill’s thesis that the politics of the society, the school, and the classroom has violence and dehumanization fixed firmly into its legitimizing logic.…”