Inside-Out Prison Exchange National Instructor Training Institute

Posted by on November 11, 2005

Hello again. We were in touch with the list-serv a few months ago about The Inside-Out Prison Exchange Program. We would like to give you a little bit of an update. (A full description of the program is further down in this message.)

We have held four week-long Inside-Out National Instructor Training Institutes since July 2004. As a result, there are now 56 instructors from 44 colleges/universities in 18 states who have participated in the trainings. A few have already held their first classes, and we expect there to be approximately 20 Inside-Out classes conducted this coming Spring semester.

The training is a very intensive, hands-on experience, including multiple visits to the State Correctional Institution at Graterford, a maximum security facility an hour away from Temple. At Graterford, we work with a group of men with whom some of us have been meeting weekly for the past three years. Our meetings inside the prison provide a depth and richness to the experience that would be very difficult to replicate otherwise. Truly, the training would be very different without the input and contribution of these men.

So, we have a growing national network of instructors who are taking this pedagogy forward in their own areas ? in terms of both geography and discipline. It is very exciting to see this take shape, and we are anxious to continue expanding more widely. We have determined dates for our next three Training Institutes, all of which will be held from Monday afternoon until Sunday late afternoon, when we will end with a closing dinner. We utilize conference
centers in the greater Philadelphia area.

The dates are:
Jan. 2-8, 2006: conducted at Pendle Hill Conference Center
May 22-28, 2006 (ending during Memorial Day wknd.): conducted at Temenos Conference Center
July 31-Aug. 6, 2006: conducted at Temenos Conference Center

If you are interested in any of these trainings, please be in touch with us via e-mail. Our address is [email protected]. We have also included below information on the program. Feel free to share it with anyone you think may be interested.

Finally, there was an article a few months back about Inside-Out in one of our Philly newspapers that you can access online — it will give you a good sense of the program. You can go to http://www.citypaper.net — click on Cover Stories — scroll down to “click to browse for more cover stories” — go to 2004 and look for Sept. 30th. The name of the article is “Turning Lives Inside-Out.”

Take care.

Lori Pompa, MSW, LSW
Director, The Inside-Out Prison Exchange Program
Soros Justice Senior Fellow