Notes: Getting Started

1. Once in prison, new educational opportunities are rarely available to the incarcerated. Those that exist are generally used to "encourage" proper behavior. That is, they serve to instill in the prisoner(s) that knowledge and those values deemed appropriate and desirable by prison administrators and those for whom they work. Further, as such programs are fundamental to the prisoner(s), access to them functions as a reward for compliant behavior, and denial of access functions as a punishment for those who resist daily injustice.
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2. Ray Luc Levasseur, "ADX One Year Later."
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3. Robert Gangi, "New York State of Mind?: Higher Education vs. Prison Funding in the Empire State," Justice Policy Institute.
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4. Vincent Schiraldi, "Is Maryland's System of Higher Education Suffering Because of Prison Expenditures?" Justice Policy Institute.
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5. Tara-Jen Ambrosia and Vincent Schiraldi, "From Classrooms to Cell Blocks: A National Perspective," Justice Policy Institute.
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6. Gangi.
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7. Dan Macallair, Khaled Taqi-Eddin and Vincent Schiraldi, "Class Dismissed: Higher Education vs. Corrections During the Wilson Years," Justice Policy Institute.
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8. Ibid.
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9. Ambrosia and Schiraldi.
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10. Kathleen Connolly, Lea McDermid, Vincent Schiraldi and Dan Macaillar, "From Classrooms to Cell Blocks: How Prison Building Affects Higher Education and African American Enrollment in California," Justice Policy Institute.
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11. This trend is clearly documented in such works as Geoffrey White's Campus Inc.: Corporate Power in the Ivory Tower (Prometheus Books, 2000), Bill Reading's The University in Ruins (Harvard University Press, 2000) and Michael Berube and Cary Nelson's Higher Education Under Fire (Routledge, 1995).
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12. Lori Pompa, "Inside-Out Prison Exchange Program Information Sheet."
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13. This brief description hardly does justice to the program, nor to Lori Pompa's efforts to establish such courses throughout our College of Liberal Arts. If you would like to contact her, she can be reached via email at lpompa@astro.temple.edu.
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14. Requests, because they arrive in such great quantities and with such frequency, are generally answered three months after they are received. Certain of the requests are designated for particular individuals with a unique knowledge of or interest in the subject area of the request so as to be able to provide the prisoner with the most appropriate material; others are relayed to the BTB member that has already established a relationship with the prisoner making the request. For instance, I generally fulfill the requests of women prisoners; those requesting materials on matters of religious history and/or criticism (as I am a graduate student of Religion); those requests that are either written, or requesting books that are written, in Spanish; those that are requesting radical political materials; and any unique requests that I would be able to fulfill more quickly and satisfactorily than another due to my familiarity with the books that we have at any given time. Because BTB can send only a limited number of books at a time, and because the prisoner will not be able to receive another package (due to our own restrictions) for many months, it is critical that the selected books match as closely as possible the prisoner's request. This can often present quite a challenge as all of the educational materials BTB is able to send to prisoners are used books donated by members of the community (with the exception of the generous donations from South End Press and Common Courage Press).
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