Allred connects students with prison population

James Fox, Campus Carrier staff writer

Nathanael Mooney, Campus Carrier staff writer

Berry College prides itself on offering students opportunities to work and learn in the Rome-Floyd community. One way students can learn off-campus is through Associate Professor of Sociology Sarah Allred’s Inside-Outside Prison Exchange Program. The Inside-Outside program, an international operation organized by Temple University, trains educators to teach courses with students inside and outside of prison. Allred has not been able to teach in Floyd County Jail prison since the COVID-19 lockdown. Since then, Allred’s class has included four to five students who are clients of the Rome Circuit Mental Health Court, which serves offenders with mental illnesses related to their charges. It serves as a diversion program and keeps some individuals out of jail entirely. Upon completion of the course, clients of the court can receive college credit for the class.

Understaffing has prevented Allred from getting back into the prison. The COVID-19 pandemic has left a large shortage of employees in the facility. 

The course content and workload is equivalent to that of a typical college-level course. The course that was taught in the prison was focused on group discussion about disability from a social science perspective, according to Allred. Now that the groups are smaller, they do not divide themselves into Berry students and Mental Health Court students, but instead work as one group.  Since Allred is unable to teach in the prisons, she has found an alternative way to share prison experiences with her students. 

“It’s a distant second choice, but instead we take tours of relevant facilities,” Allred said. 

A new way Allred has been allowing her students to understand the American prison is re-entry simulations. Senior Heidi Sawyer explained the re-entry simulation and how it helps students to put themselves into the shoes of incarcerated people.

“All participants meet at Sarah Hightower Library, and they’re given a card that tells them who they are for the purposes of the simulation,” Sawyer said. “Maybe your name is Heidi, you’re 50 [years old], you just got done serving a 20-year sentence. You have no money, a driver’s license, and you have to complete all the tasks like running errands, going to work, eating and finding a place to sleep. You have to complete all these things within two weeks or you will go back to jail.”

Sawyer explained the impact of the re-entry simulations and how they reveal the cracks in the justice system.

“We’re put under pressure in this simulation and realize it’s very difficult and stressful to complete all these things and to have so few resources while doing it,” Sawyer said. “A lot of people realize how easy it is to go to jail and how easy it is to be incarcerated and be somebody that re-enters the justice system over and over because of struggle and hardship. [The simulation] is very rewarding and fosters a lot of community engagement and meaningful discussion from different perspectives because we have such a diverse and enriching array of people that attend.”

Additionally, Sawyer explained how the activity allowed her to connect with other people from the Rome community and gave her a chance to talk with people who had been incarcerated in the past.

“You meet people and you get to know people you’ve never met before in the community,” Sawyer said. “I met some people from Living Proof that worked there, and I remember when I was ‘in jail’ in the simulation, I was sitting with some other people who were talking to me about what it’s really like to be in jail and talking about their real life outside. I was talking with some women and they were talking to me about what they actually have to do when they leave here and what they have going on in their lives, how they’re being very closely supervised and their lives are pretty devoid of freedom.”

While COVID-19 might have effectively halted Allred’s usual course, the re-entry simulation that has taken its place provides experiences that are just as, if not more, profound and useful for Berry College students and the Rome community alike.