USC offers incarcerated students credit in classes this spring

The Dornsife Prison Education Project--which offers USC classes to incarcerated students--will finally allow these students to receive academic credit for taking these courses.

Maddy Brown has more on how the program hopes this change will provide greater support to incarcerated students, and work to dismantle the misconceptions surrounding the prison system.

For the first time in USC’s history, the university will be offering a class to incarcerated students in which they can actually earn credit.

Since 2017, the Dornsife Prison Education Project, or USC PEP, has offered various classes to incarcerated students. These classes teach various subjects, from physics to film studies. They meet once a week for 8 weeks and are taught by USC professors, who are typically aided by five to ten USC students acting as TAs.

For the last three years, USC PEP has been running a Writing 320 class. They call this class an inside out writing workshop, meaning its a combination of students on the “inside” at The California Institution for Women and students on the “outside,” meaning they attend USC. In this class, USC students don’t play the role of the TA, but rather take the class with the incarcerated students.

Now for the first time, incarcerated students that take this class will earn credit just like their peers at USC do. Kate Levin, the co-director of USC PEP and one of the professors that teaches the Writing 320 class, explains why this new development is an improvement on the previous system.

Levin: But what it hasn’t offered them is any credit, any academic credit that they can, let’s say, put towards a degree or have a transcript for anything like that. So we’ve wanted to give them that because that can make a huge difference in people’s lives, whether they want to continue their education or whether they simply want to, let’s say, show a parole officer, you know, that they’ve taken the class from you to see it really matters. Now, I think it’s still, you know, made a difference in the students lives because, you know, they you know, for one thing, what the research shows is that if an incarcerated person takes even one college class while they’re in on the inside, they are almost half as likely to recidivate or end up back in prison.

Levin believes the classes will not only positively impact incarcerated students, but USC students as well. She believes that when USC students learn alongside incarcerated students, it helps dismantle their misconceptions about prisons and incarcerated people. For Levin, these classes help all the students gain a richer understanding of each other and the world around them.

Nicholas De Dominic, who is also a co-director of USC PEP and a teacher of the Writing 320 class, addressed why in some ways it’s USC’s responsibility to offer this for-credit class.

De Dominic: USC is in South L.A. and South L.A. is a community that’s been over affected by incarceration. USC’s relationship to South L.A. is really, really complex, too, right? And it’s responsible for some of the overpolicing, it’s responsible for some of the gentrification. It’s responsible for fewer opportunities in some ways. I think over the last 20 years, through programs like the neighborhood academic initiatives, the work that JAP is doing, the university’s gotten better about sort of understanding its relationship and its commitment to the people that live outside our doors. But it doesn’t necessarily redress all the harm that it’s performed. And so programs like this begin to sort of answer for some of our previous sins.

Students enrolled at USC and incarcerated students will be able to take the Writing 320 class in the spring.

For Annenberg Radio News, I’m Maddy Brown.