It’s a well-known fact that the United States is incarcerating more people than any other country in the world – and the prison system has been widely criticized for its inhumane practices, inefficiency, and high recidivism rates.
Unsurprisingly, part of the solution lies in education.
Studies have shown that inmates who take part in educational programs in prison are 47 percent less likely to reoffend.But some say philosophy, in particular, can benefit prisoners in ways that other subjects can’t. Indeed, studies have shown that academically, children who learn philosophy in schools perform drastically better compared to their peers. But should we also bring philosophy to prisons?
Some already did. In both the U.S. and the United Kingdom, academic professors have taken up teaching in prisons. For instance, Drew Leder, professor of philosophy at Loyola College in Maryland also teaches philosophy in the Maryland Penitentiary.
In an interview for the philosophy news website Daily Nous, Leder shares some of the questions he and his students approach in class, while turning to Epictetus or classic Chinese texts for answers:
How to build a good life as a “lifer”? How, while serving long time, to have time serve you? How, while being confined for decades on in a tiny cell, in a locked tier, in a razor-wire-fringed maximum-security prison – how to expand space and take flight?
“The men,” Leder explains, “wish to flourish, and need the resources, personal and intellectual, that will aid their quest. So they are passionately interested in our quest-ions and texts.”
In the same article, another professor chimes in: “One prisoner said that the course I taught on Foucault’s Discipline & Punishment was the most meaningful course he has ever taken.”
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Searching for Meaning
Jonathan Haidt
Professor, University of Virginia
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