Learning
CRIMINAL JUSTICE
from the INSIDE OUT
By: Deb O'Reilly
T
his fall, GMercyU launched a new experiential learning opportunity for
Criminal Justice majors called the Inside-Out Prison Exchange Program ® .
The program, used by colleges around the world, brings incarcerated and non-
incarcerated students together as peers to inspire social change through dialogue
and collaboration.
Beginning in September, 15 GMercyU “outside” students – the
program’s inaugural class – attended 13 meetings with “inside”
students at the Federal Detention Center in Philadelphia. Each
weekly meeting was roughly two and a half hours long and
consisted of guided dialogue on topics spanning crime, justice,
the criminal justice system, corrections, and imprisonment.
“Realizing there’s another group of people just like you who
were incarcerated because of different life circumstances is a
truly transformative experience for students and instructors
alike,” said Associate Professor and Criminal Justice Program
Coordinator, Patrick McGrain, PhD, who teaches the program
at GMercyU. “You can’t get this kind of experience in the
classroom or even through an internship.”
Criminal Justice major, Mackenzie Iocona '20, one of
GMercyU’s “outside” students, agreed. “It gets you to see the
system and the people that are a part of it,” she said. “It gives
you a whole new perspective. It definitely inspired me to want to
be an advocate, to be that voice for people who don’t necessarily
know what they’ve gotten into or have been treated wrongly by
the system.”
2
TODAY
To be selected for the program at the Federal Detention Center,
the “inside” students must be serving time for the commission
of a nonviolent offense and complete an interview process
with the Reentry Affairs Coordinator at the Federal Detention
Center. The “outside” students must have junior or senior
standing at Gwynedd Mercy University and be interviewed and
approved by Dr. McGrain.
In order to bring the Inside-Out Prison Exchange Program ® to
GMercyU, Dr. McGrain completed a week-long training course
at FCI-Hazelton, a maximum-security prison in West Virginia
and one of several Inside-Out training sites throughout the
country.
The GMercyU Inside-Out meetings at the Federal Detention
Center were complemented by coursework that includes
several required texts, a cost that none of the "inside" students
were able to cover. However, Dr. McGrain worked with book
publishers and bookstores to receive the books as donations or
at discounted prices. The New Press donated one of the texts for
the course. Lisa McGarry, PhD, the Dean of the School of Arts
& Sciences, generously covered the cost of two other texts, and
Dr. McGrain covered the cost of the remaining books. At the