For three hours every Thursday night, the locked steel doors at Ryan Correctional Facility in Detroit slide open for a class of University of Michigan-Dearborn students. Michigan's first Inside-Out Prison Exchange Program is changing lives -- on both sides of the walls.

I hope it also changes thinking on both sides of the aisle in the Legislature. Over the years, legislators have practically eliminated prison college courses and tried to cut basic education for inmates, even though national studies show that such programs cut recidivism by 30% or more.

Inside-Out takes a strong step in the right direction. It brings together 15 inmates, or "inside students," with 15 "outside students" from UM-Dearborn. The three-credit course, running from September to December, explores race, class and gender in the criminal justice system.

Inside students walk to class from steel cells and prison yards. Outside students drive from apartments and homes. Some inside students have been in prison longer than some of their classmates have been alive. Outside students are mostly white. Those inside are mostly African American.

Together, they examine the criminal justice system through the prism of prison.

"Theory is really important, but it doesn't tell you how the policies are carried out through people who have lived it," said Professor Lora Lempert, who teaches Inside-Out at Ryan. "That's part of what the outside students get from the inside students."

The Department of Corrections prohibits the use of state money to pay for post-secondary education, but Inside-Out doesn't cost taxpayers a dime. Comerica and other private donors have covered the costs of inmate textbooks and materials. State Sen. Michael Switalski, D-Roseville, helped get the Inside-Out program into Ryan.

An exchange of equals

Inside-Out classes are offered at prisons in at least 16 other states. In 2003 and 2004, Temple University Professor Lori Pompa, using a Soros Justice Fellowship, created a national model for Inside-Out and started to train instructors. Pompa got the idea for teaching criminal justice in prison from an inmate serving a life sentence in Pennsylvania.

"This is an exchange of equals," Pompa said in a phone interview. "For the outside students, it roots theory in reality. For those on the inside, it's an opportunity to take their experience and see it in a much bigger framework."

Outside and inside students know each other by first names only, partly for security reasons. Contact outside the classroom is prohibited. Outside students do not know what crimes inside students have been convicted of.

Most of the UM-Dearborn students had never been in a prison. They had to get used to the pat-downs, metal detectors and clothing searches that all visitors are subjected to.

Eric, 22, of Redford Township, a political science major, said Inside-Out has changed how he views the nation's 2 million prisoners.

"You just don't think about prisons or the people in them," Eric told me. "But I've gotten to know them as people, as intelligent human beings. I want to be able to do something for them. When the class ends, it's going to be a bummer."

Thought, discussion, applause

The class I watched last week took place in a spartan prison activity room, but the discussions were as live as any college classroom's. In work groups of six, students debated the criminal justice system and how to make it better. One inmate presenter beamed when the class broke into applause.

"Most university students know they're smart, but the inside students haven't got that message," Lempert said. "When they find out they can do the work and have original ideas, even their body language changes. They become more confident thinkers."

Inmate students are highly motivated, she said, and view education as a privilege.

David Hudson Bey, 49, president of the Ryan chapter of the National Lifers of America, invited me to last week's class. He has been locked up for 24 years. For most inmates, Inside-Out is their first college experience. But Hudson had earned an associate's degree from Jackson Community College in 1987, when Corrections still offered college courses. All that changed in the early 1990s. MDOC ended publicly funded college courses and President Bill Clinton signed legislation making inmates ineligible for Pell tuition assistance grants.

"That took away hope," Hudson told me. "It was telling people they could never become productive members of society. People with an education tend to change their thinking. When people know better, they do better."

More than 95% of the state's 50,000 inmates will return to their communities. Education would help them avoid the traps of street life, give them the skills to earn a legal living, and reduce the number of parolees who return to prison at a huge cost to taxpayers.

It's a simple truth that seems hard for some to accept.

Tomorrow night, the Inside-Out class at Ryan will cover punishment and rehabilitation. I know a few legislators who could learn something from it.

For the full article, see Jeff Gerritt, "College goes to prison", Detroit Free Press, October 17, 2007.