Why a Prison Classroom Might Be the Best Place for a College Student to Truly Learn
This story is published in partnership with Open Campus, a nonprofit newsroom focused on higher education. Subscribe to College Inside, an Open Campus newsletter on the future of postsecondary education in prison.
On the first day of class, professor Reiko Hillyer writes a quote from French philosopher Michel Foucault on the board: “Is it surprising that prisons resemble factories, schools, barracks, hospitals, which all resemble prisons?”
The students in the room have a lot to say about that. The class includes undergraduates from Lewis & Clark College in Portland, Oregon, and incarcerated students—meeting inside Columbia River Correctional Institution, a minimum-security prison. They’re there for a course on the history of crime and punishment in the United States. It’s part of the Inside-Out Prison Exchange Program, an international initiative that runs college courses inside prisons with half the seats filled by incarcerated students and half by outside students.
Hillyer, a historian at Lewis & Clark, has taught the course since 2012 and documented the experience in her 2024 book A Wall Is Just a Wall (Duke University Press). A documentary about the class, Classroom 4, directed by her childhood friend Eden Wurmfeld, is now streaming on PBS. I spoke with Hillyer about what the Inside-Out model enables and what her incarcerated students thought of the film. This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.
You open with a quote from Foucault. What does that discussion reveal about the Inside-Out model?
It’s the purest example of bringing together lived experience and academic knowledge. Outside students from a liberal arts college are trained in abstract analytical thinking—how institutions are built, what purpose they serve, for whom. Inside students have the wisdom of their own lives. In that conversation, you see both at once. An inside student might note that prisons in eastern Oregon once housed mental patients or soldiers; an outside student might discuss modernity and the need for discipline under capitalism. Lived experience validates theory, and theory gives those with lived experience tools to make sense of their own lives.
You’ve said part of the goal is to “denaturalize” what we take for granted. What do you mean?
Prison is one of the most taken-for-granted institutions. We assume it, just as we assume school. But these are human decisions that came out of particular histories, made by people who had the power to make them. People inside prisons naturalize it as much as people outside. My job as a historian—no matter the topic—is to denaturalize what we accept without question. When it comes to prisons, our unquestioned acceptance of carcerality and punishment as the main response to social transgression causes real harm. Incarcerated people are made invisible, and these are public institutions with almost no transparency. When you meet someone who is incarcerated and have a real conversation with them, no matter who, that conversation will likely disarm you and make you wonder: Does this person need to be exiled for the rest of their life?
How did you get started with Inside-Out?
My field is U.S. history—the built environment, public memory, the American South, and more recently the history of mass incarceration. Around 2010 or 2011, a colleague told me about the Inside-Out Prison Exchange Program and said the training might really help me. It was the best thing I ever did. The training involved participation and coaching by people who were incarcerated at Graterford Prison in Pennsylvania—many of them juvenile lifers. After that, I figured out how to start a class at Lewis & Clark, where I was a visiting instructor. I already had a relationship with Columbia River as a yoga teacher, so I felt comfortable reaching out to the superintendent to propose it. I launched the first class in 2012, not knowing if I’d ever do it again. I didn’t even have a permanent job at Lewis & Clark, but I thought, If this is something I only get to do once, it’s worth it.
How did the documentary come together?
The director, Eden Wurmfeld, has been my best friend since we were 12. She’s been a filmmaker a long time, and I think in the back of her mind she always hoped to capture this somehow. As a historian—especially given the current political climate—I felt this needed to be documented. People on the outside who may never get to take a class like this need to see the folks on the inside. Getting cameras in was logistically challenging: every piece of equipment had to be logged in and out. But my liaison at the prison was a tremendous advocate for the class and, I believe, took a professional risk by saying yes to the cameras.
What was the reaction when you screened the film inside?
I screened it at Columbia River and twice at Oregon State Penitentiary—once for the lifers group, once for the Asian Pacific Family Club. Some of those men have been serving sentences of 37, 41, 60 years. They were deeply grateful, not just for the Inside-Out class, but because the film had screened in Aspen, D.C., and around the country—to audiences who might not have otherwise seen it. What they said, over and over, was: “You’re representing us. The guys in the film are all of us. You’ve made it clear we’re not the monsters people think we are.”
What have some of the students in the film gone on to do?
Nick Five Oaks, who appears prominently, has been out about two years and flew to Aspen for the world premiere to join the Q&A panel. And James, who speaks at the end about his inner child being released from its box—after that one class, he became passionate about education, having had a poor relationship with the formal system most of his life. He took every Inside-Out class offered after that before his release, and even served as a teaching assistant for me the next time I taught.
How has teaching inside shaped your research?
It made me start asking, Has it always been this way? I was spending time with people who were incarcerated and feeling their isolation—one man at Oregon State Penitentiary told me the best thing about transferring to Columbia River was seeing trees for the first time in 20 years. So I began researching a specific prison, the Virginia State Penitentiary, whose archives had just opened. I found executive orders for clemencies, for furloughs—people leaving at Christmas for 10 days and then returning. I found a document releasing people convicted of first-degree murder so they could give a talk at a Masonic lodge or play chess at a high school tournament. This was in the late 1960s in Virginia. I was amazed. Something that surprises you is bound to be an interesting story.
Context & impact: The Inside-Out model has been replicated at more than 100 institutions across the U.S. and abroad, serving as a rare bridge between the incarcerated and the free. Research suggests such programs reduce recidivism and increase empathy among outside students. As Hillyer’s experience shows, the classroom behind bars can challenge deeply held assumptions about justice, punishment, and human potential—at a time when the U.S. locks up more people than any other country in the world.