In ASU's Inside-Out program, students and inmates take a semester-long class together

Back in the late 1990s, Lori Pompa, a professor at Temple University, had an idea: what if her students took a semester-long course alongside inmates at a Pennsylvania prison?

What, she wondered, could the students learn from the inmates? What could the inmates learn from the students?

In 1997, Pompa launched the Inside-Out Prison Exchange Program. Since then, chapters of the program have sprung up all over the country, including right here in the Valley.

Alexis Klemm is a Ph.D. student in criminology at Arizona State University, and she says the program changed her life.

After she completed a semester of the Inside-Out program as an undergrad, she returned as a facilitator, and she continues to lead gatherings of students and inmates as part of her ongoing research.

Klemm joined The Show, and she said she first became interested in justice reform after watching crime procedurals on TV.

Like a lot of people, she was compelled by the mystery-solving element of shows like "Law & Order" and "Criminal Minds." But she always felt there was more to the story.

Full conversation

ALEXIS KLEMM: I think there was always this level of unknown that I think was fascinating to me. And then as I got older, I dove more into what that unknown meant to different degrees. And that's when I really got interested in criminal justice and criminology overall.

SAM DINGMAN: So tell me a little bit more about that unknown. What was it that you wanted to investigate there?

KLEMM: I think it was this desire to understand perhaps how people end up in particular circumstances. And oftentimes I think Hollywood productions of crime and those kind of shows show it in a very particular way and don't often get into that background of what could have potentially led someone there.

DINGMAN: So, like in the show, there's the unknown of like, are they going to be found guilty or you know, which way is the trial going to go? But there's this bigger unknown, which is the context of how the person got caught up in this situation.

KLEMM: Absolutely. And I think the context is important, especially as we start looking to real life outside of, again, outside of shows and movies and Hollywood depictions of these things.

Context is incredibly important. And you see the importance of context in the way that the system operates and also people who are impacted by the system and within the system, how that context matters to the way they navigate it.

DINGMAN: So let's come now to you get to ASU and you find out about the Inside-Out program. ]What drew you to it?

KLEMM: It was interesting. It was an on the ground, kind of hands on, if you will, experience within the system that isn't often offered within kind of traditional modalities of learning in university. I also was kind of always interested in corrections and prisons as a potential career path post-graduation.

This class gives an insight into the prison system that I know I wasn't getting from lecture-based, textbook-based learning at the university.

DINGMAN: One of the things I am intrigued about that I think you've spoken about previously is this idea of discomfort and that that was something that was important to you.

KLEMM: I attribute a lot of the way that I feel about this topic to having taken Inside-Out. It's a concept that I learned as a student within Inside-Out. And now as a facilitator, continue to really emphasize. But this idea of embracing discomfort, being OK with being uncomfortable, it seems like.

DINGMAN: To some extent it's baked in to the design of this program, right. Because am I correct that the classes take place at the prison?

KLEMM: Correct. It's a semester-long class and we meet once a week for three hours at a time within the prison setting. It's usually 10 ASU undergraduate students and 10 incarcerated students in a classroom.

And when I took the class as a student, which was back in 2019, I took it at the women's prison. And we weren't in a classroom per se, we were in the visitation room. And so it's the same kind of big open space with windows that you can see out onto the yard.

And this is where people visit with their families and their loved ones over the weekends. And this is their space for connection to the outside community. Certainly not a traditional classroom setting that most people would think of.

DINGMAN: Yeah, I could imagine that being sort of fertile territory for discomfort.

KLEMM: Absolutely. And I think, I think it takes a bit to admit that discomfort. There's a level of discomfort for everybody on all sides, all parties involved. I would argue, and I can speak as a facilitator of the program now, there's a level of discomfort for facilitators and what it means to have this class of 20 people interacting.

We're talking about ASU students, undergraduate students, who this is more than likely their first experience ever within the system. Perhaps they've taken a tour of a courthouse or a jail at some point in time, but to really process through the facility on a weekly basis, sit next to women who are wearing orange, and then on the flip side of that, it's perhaps women who have not interacted with someone of that age group for a long time.

We're talking across generations, generational learning that's occurring here and concepts that are new to each group respectively, and everybody's really learning from each other. But there is naturally some discomfort that comes along with that.

DINGMAN: As I understand it, there is a syllabus, but part of the focus also is the way the learning is done as much as it is the exact content of what is being taught.

KLEMM: Absolutely. There's a syllabus, there's books, everybody reads the same books throughout the semester. You write papers throughout the semester. There's a class project at the end, which always proves fun to be a part of, but also to witness from a distance, seeing 20 people again across all the varying differences and backgrounds come together to produce a final product.

But it's true, the class is really made up based on the experiences that you have within it on a day to day, based on the interactions and the discussion. Pretty much the entirety of the three hours are different activities where you're up and moving around and discussions that you are in small groups or partnered up or sometimes we have large group discussions.

It's very dynamic and it's a big reason why we call the instructors facilitators because it's truly a facilitation of the program, not a teaching of anything super specific.

I will say that a majority of the content that we teach is it's really human-centered. It's not based on justice. You don't go into this class, you're not taking a Criminal Justice 100 class, just so happens to be in a prison. You're taking a class about what it means to learn, what it means to prioritize the things that matter to you, what it means to be a better person regardless of circumstances.

DINGMAN: The 2019 class, among other things, published this letter of 10 key takeaways. And one of those was meaning can be found in the smallest of things.

Was there, in that spirit, some small moment or interaction in the class that became meaning making for you?

KLEMM: One of the most powerful things that came out of that class for me was that I went into it again having a what I like to think is a reasonable understanding of the system. Having having been in school, having done my own personal learning and looking into what the system is, what it does, what its challenges are.

But then you get in there and you see firsthand the challenges. You learn of the experiences of the people who are experiencing incarceration or of the correctional staff who are in there. You see the challenges firsthand, you see the gaps and you start to see where you fit in them.

And I think that's what really was powerful for me is because going into this, I, and I still do. I still have the big dreams of supporting large scale policy change or legislation that can make positive changes within our system.

But it's also more so important to me at this stage in my career, particularly that I'm there, I'm on the ground. I'm interacting with the people who are experiencing it firsthand, whose lives are continuing while we wait on all those big changes down the line.

There are people currently within the system right now that don't have time to wait on the big changes. And there are ways to communicate effectively and respectfully within those contexts that could allow the work and the conversations and the interactions to be far more effective and positive with better outcomes.