MURDER, POLITICS, AND THE END OF THE JAZZ AGE
by Michael Wolraich
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Prison.edu
By Michael Wolraich on Mon, 09/17/2012 - 12:43pm |
THERE IS A COLLEGE in California whose campus, if it can be called that, consists of a few portable trailers. Classes are also taught inside a converted laundry facility whose walls don't reach the ceiling, where learning happens despite the din created by dozens of men in adjacent rooms vying for their teacher's attention. The school is called the Prison University Project (referred to affectionately as 'PUP' by students and instructors alike). It teaches 20 classes a semester and has a total enrollment of under 400 students.
The campus is housed within San Quentin State Penitentiary, also home to California's death row and to a reception center where new inmates are categorized and sorted by race and security level. Most prisoners then enter the general population at San Quentin, but some are sent to one of the state's thirty-two other prisons. Those who don't stay miss their chance at a college education, because no other prison in California offers one.
URL:
http://lareviewofbooks.org/article.php?&id=929
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