Episode 3: Interview with Formerly-Incarcerated Juvenile Lifers

In 2012, the U.S. Supreme Court held in Miller v. Alabama that it is unconstitutional to sentence a juvenile offender to mandatory life-without-parole. A 2016 ruling allowed this to be applied retroactively. In practical terms, this means that those juvenile offenders previously sentenced to mandatory life-with-out-parole can seek re-sentencing by the trial court. That is exactly what happened to John Pace, Stacey Torrance, and Charles Brown. They were featured in a Philadelphia Inquirer article from September 6, 2017, about formerly-incarcerated "juvenile lifers." In this, the third episode of the Inside-Out podcast, Dave Krueger talks with them about their experiences of higher education in prison and the role that Inside-Out courses played in their personal and professional development. 

Episode Guide:

2:25 --Charles Brown, Stacey Torrance, and John Pace introduce themselves. 

 

3:05 -- You are all alumni of Inside-Out courses, which combine incarcerated and non-incarcerated students together for semester-long courses. Could you describe what it was like to meet the "outside" students on the first day of class? 

 

8:10 -- What were some of the techniques in the Inside-Out classroom that you thought were most helpful to get students to engage in dialogue with one another? 

 

13:26 -- How is the Inside-Out approach to teaching different than other teaching approaches you have encountered? What do you think are the attributes and methods of an effective educator? 

 

18:23 -- Given the highly divisive political and cultural climate in the U.S. today, do you think the Inside-Out model of dialogue and learning can have any relevance in the world outside of prisons and jails? 

 

23:36 -- What kind of an impact did Inside-Out courses have on you personally while you were living inside the prison? Do you think that these courses had any effect on changing the culture of the prison? 

 

30:40 -- The three of you are just a few months into your new life on the outside of prison. What's next for you? What are you looking forward to? 

 

36:43 -- Where do you see yourselves five years from now? 

The Inside-Out Prison Exchange Program:

The Inside-Out Podcast is hosted by David M. Krueger and is a production of The Inside-Out Center at Temple University in Philadelphia. The Inside-Out Prison Exchange Program is an educational program that facilitates dialog across cultural differences and social status. It started in 1997, originating as a means to bring together campus-based college students and incarcerated students for a semester-long course held in a correctional setting. This educational model has been replicated across the United States and in several countries. It has grown into an international network of nearly 800 trained faculty, 22,000 alumni, and hundreds of higher education and correctional administrators, who have sponsored classes over the past 20 years. Inside-Out seeks to bring about social change through transformative education. To find out more about the program, make a financial contribution, or apply to upcoming Instructor Training Institutes, please visit the website at insideoutcenter.org.