Dear friends,
One of the greatest challenges of communicating with the outside world about life inside Mount Tamalpais College is conveying how the setting of the prison informs the experience for everyone involved. In many respects, MTC is a traditional liberal arts college with small class sizes, highly dedicated faculty and staff, and a very close-knit community; yet in other respects, it is radically different. One arena in which the contrast is especially stark is the realm of academic freedom.
The main difference between the conventional academic world and the one inside is that within the prison, institutional concerns about safety and security (however the prison chooses to define that) trump everything else. Perhaps most importantly, the college is not the ultimate authority or arbiter of conflict or disagreement. The college is always a guest – much as if it operated in a foreign country with its own laws and social norms. This makes the challenge of upholding academic freedom immeasurably more complex.
Background
MTC provides an Associate of Arts degree as well as intensive college preparatory programming to approximately 300 people a term, three terms per year, at San Quentin Rehabilitation Center. The college charges no fees or tuition, and receives no funding from the state or federal government; instead it relies entirely on philanthropic support from individuals and institutional foundations.
MTC instructors all work as volunteer adjunct faculty, and they are assigned anew for each term. The same applies to teaching assistants and tutors. Most volunteers are faculty or graduate students from local Bay Area colleges and universities, or other professionals. Classes are generally taught in pairs or teams.
While MTC has no permanent faculty, many teach intermittently over time. Some instructors work with us for many years; others just once. While this turnover is in some respects not ideal, it does allow MTC to serve as a valuable training ground for local academics and professionals in trauma-informed, student-centered education, and specifically, in teaching in a prison setting. Many former MTC faculty now teach in other prisons around the country; a number have founded prison education programs in other states.
Interpersonal, Logistical, and Political Challenges
By the very nature and scope of our work, we impose a huge workload burden on San Quentin – through the massive volume of our clearance requests for materials and people; regular special events; and our requests for media access, including photography and video production, as well as news media. (All media requests require special permission and supervision.)
MTC runs classes six days a week with over twenty classes offered per term. This requires that the prison permit annually over three hundred non-state employees – instructors, teaching assistants, guest lecturers, tutors and other visitors – to spend time within the secure perimeter of the prison with minimal supervision.
Our continued presence inside San Quentin also requires that prison leadership – and the many supportive line staff – hold their ground against formidable opposition to our existence among their own colleagues, some of whom consider it inappropriate, or even outrageous, that incarcerated people should have access to free higher education. While some see us as a stabilizing influence within the prison, others see us as increasing the risk of physical violence, manipulation, smuggling, or escape.
MTC would not survive for a week without the tremendous efforts of staff and administrators throughout the prison who help keep the college running, and actively troubleshoot when things go wrong. The entire enterprise would also not be possible if faculty and staff were not willing to persevere within the often frustrating, and sometimes extreme, constraints of the prison environment.
Interpersonal, Logistical, and Political Challenges
In the event of logistical difficulties or conflict of any kind between the college and the institution, we, like all outside programs and service providers, have little or no recourse beyond our relationships with prison staff or administrators. At times, political connections are certainly useful, but those can also easily backfire, as their deployment is likely to provoke resentment, and even backlash.
Some of the significant challenges that we have grappled with over the years, and do routinely (constructively and collegially) raise with the institution, relate to concerns like: administrative communications with students; misconduct or obstructionist behavior of prison staff; serious unmet medical or mental health needs of students; the need for adequate classroom space; or logistical issues that prevent students from getting to class, or otherwise impact the basic operations of the college.
In other words, student access and wellbeing, and our ability to simply get materials and faculty into the prison, are our main existential priorities. Like virtually all prison programs, we are constantly triaging complex political and interpersonal challenges, assessing which battles are most essential, and worth fighting. The work of protecting freedom of any kind in the prison college space always involves simultaneously preserving the “right” of the college itself to exist, and students’ ability to access it.
Safeguarding Independence
MTC is also deeply committed to preserving the academic integrity and independence of the college. In practice, this means safeguarding curriculum development, course content, and faculty selection from outside interference, and protecting the classroom as a space where faculty and students can discuss topics and express opinions freely.
People unfamiliar with the culture of corrections often struggle to imagine the extent of discretion wielded by individual prison staff and administrators, or their vastly different rules and priorities. Staff are trained to monitor constantly for anything that could trigger violence, signal deviance, or otherwise create disruption. Most Departmental rules pertaining to allowable print materials (including imagery) are established within the California Code of Regulations, Title 15, § 3006, which pertains to contraband. Staff are not necessarily familiar with either Departmental regulations or the local rules of their own institution, much less with relevant case law; most simply rely on their own judgment, or that of their peers or supervisors.
Like most prison systems, CDCR’s rules pertaining to allowable materials are vague and inconsistent. Institutions are theoretically permitted to exercise discretion for educational purposes, but many, if not most, do not. CDCR also maintains a list of disallowed publications that is added to year-to-year. The prison is to the first amendment what outer space is to gravity.
In years past, textbooks were routinely denied clearance because of their title or cover illustration; volunteers often on the basis of outside activities. For decades, no film with a rating above PG was allowed. The clearance of an Israeli conscientious objector and activist was once rescinded on the grounds of political “extremism.” Jared Diamond’s Germs, Guns and Steel was presumed to be a bioterrorism handbook. A Spanish language teen romance magazine was rejected as prurient; an image of Botticelli’s Birth of Venus was considered obscene. A satirical picture of a U.S. politician in Ku Klux Klan garb was interpreted as white supremacist literature. The writings of Black revolutionaries like Eldridge Cleaver’s Soul on Ice were (sometimes) rejected, although copies were all over the prison. It all depended on who was signing the paperwork that day.
Even if potentially contentious materials were approved for distribution, students were – and sometimes still are – afraid to take them back to their cells or dorms, for fear that their possession might be interpreted as evidence of gang affiliation, sexual deviance, or political extremism – and lead to write-ups, solitary confinement, transfer to a higher security level institution, or denial of parole. Some students still steer clear of research topics that could be interpreted as a nefarious sign.
Today, largely because of the decades we have spent building trust and credibility, and because the culture of the prison has evolved dramatically over time, prison staff rarely scrutinize MTC course materials. Security concerns about equipment and supplies always remain, but by and large, discretion over course content is delegated to us. We are known as zealously committed to the quality of students’ education, and willing to follow the prison’s rules and regulations as a condition of the exceptional access and support that is granted to us.
Other colleges in prisons around the state and the country are afforded far less privacy and independence. Some prisons seek, for example, to influence or determine curriculum, decide on admissions criteria, monitor classroom discussions, screen instructors for their ideological viewpoints, scrutinize student work, or access students’ academic records. Many college programs around the country today routinely deal with intrusions much like those described above.
Unlearning Privilege
In the prison context, any conflict that we might regard as a matter of academic freedom
can never be resolved simply by invoking an abstract right, issuing demands, or threatening litigation. Communicating with a correctional institution or individual staff person in an aggressive, demanding, or condescending manner is apt to worsen any situation, or even foreclose the possibility of a positive outcome.
People who live and work in the free world may struggle to imagine an academic setting that is this vulnerable. The ways in which “safety and security” are understood within the culture of corrections are also often far from intuitive for outsiders. People who are used to being supported, empowered, or even deferred to may struggle to conceive of a professional or legal environment in which their own personal sense of logic, decency, or fairness will not necessarily prevail in a conflict – one in which no higher authority shares their values, cares about them, and “has their back.”
Even harder to grasp is often the extreme vulnerability of the incarcerated student, or the harm that individuals can do to students or programs through behavior that might feel to them innocuous, noble, heroic, or “justified.” One of the greatest challenges of an in-prison college can be helping teachers understand that their cultural norms or personal desires will need to be subordinated to the safety of their students, and those students’ need for the college to exist. Disregarding institutional rules, or otherwise acting in ways that call into question one’s situational awareness, trustworthiness, or good judgment, can all rapidly undermine the institution’s good will or tolerance for people or programs.
Legal Precarity
The challenge of upholding academic freedom in the prison context is also fundamentally shaped by the extreme precarity of the legal and constitutional rights of incarcerated people, and their total lack of control of their own physical environment. Departments of corrections in the U.S. have extraordinary discretion in all aspects of prison operations, including whom they allow into their institutions. If pressed, they need only assert a “legitimate penological interest” or a “threat to the safety and security of the institution” to defend their actions. In a legal, practical, and cultural sense, U.S. prisons are essentially police states.
By and large, the courts defer to correctional administrators as “the experts” in all things related to corrections, and specifically regarding what constitutes a threat to institutional safety and security. In almost all cases, if the prison does not want someone or something in their institution, they don’t come in. Thus, in countless instances, including in relation to First Amendment matters, one can easily be “right,” but still lose. The result of litigation is often not simply defeat, but bad case law. Prison litigation can function like quicksand.
Even where incarcerated people are found to have a theoretically protected constitutional right – for example, to free expression – the mechanics of exercising that right remain vulnerable to the discretion of the institution. An incarcerated person may have the right to publish whatever they like in a prison newspaper, for example, but the prison has no legal obligation to allow that prison newspaper to exist. A person might have the right to express an unpopular opinion, or even to report wrongdoing, but it is also nearly impossible to protect an incarcerated person from retaliation, including destruction of property, physical harm, or specious write-ups that might cause wrongful discipline, withholding of privileges, or even the denial of parole. Even when courts have found that a given activity, service, or form of property, for example, is protected or required under a constitutional right, it is extraordinarily difficult to enforce compliance.
Other Prison Rules
CDCR (and prisons in the US generally) also have extensive rules regarding prison staff, volunteer, and visitor conduct. (“Volunteer” is the term commonly used to refer to non-state employee service providers). Most rules pertain to what people can wear, what they can do while inside, how they may interact with incarcerated people, and what they can carry in and out. By and large, these rules are intended to avoid violence, prevent escape, maintain stark interpersonal boundaries between staff and incarcerated people, prevent the introduction of contraband, and control the flow of all forms of communications or other information in and out of the prison. The risk of escape is essentially viewed in its seriousness as on par with the risk of violence.
Regarding educational and other programs offered by external (i.e., non-state) organizations, groups, or individuals, prisons have broad discretion over whom they allow to operate inside. Religious programming is on somewhat stronger footing because the constitutional right of incarcerated people to religious practice has been upheld, but even in that context, prisons can always deny or rescind the access of an individual provider.
If prison officials deem that an individual has broken a rule, they may bar them from coming inside the prison, and once an individual has been barred from a prison, a service provider, including a college or university, cannot simply overrule the prison’s decision. All work inside San Quentin at the pleasure of the prison, and can be barred at any time.
Media Access
First Amendment matters in this realm are largely adjudicated through rules contained in Title 15 regarding news and “non-news media” access to the prisons. All MTC staff and faculty are informed of these rules as part of their training. Like many Departmental rules, these are often interpreted differently by individual staff and administrators, and often inconsistently enforced. For this reason, MTC volunteers are trained to err on the side of caution.
Based on our decades of observation, the purpose of these rules is typically to prevent the publication of content that might cause conflict, harm, or professional or legal liability, such as content containing confidential or sensitive information or images; content that might incite animosity between racial groups, or inspire violence; subject matter that has been obtained through unauthorized research conducted inside the institution; or content that might be used to assist in escape, or that might be deemed exploitative of incarcerated people (or make the State vulnerable to litigation), for example, by using their names, images, creative work, or biographical information without their consent.
Another important, yet unwritten, function of those media access rules (like those of many state agencies) is to manage the public image of the institution, and by extension, the Department of Corrections – and by extension, the Governor’s Office. Historically, media rules have also functioned to prevent individual incarcerated people from benefiting from their own “notoriety.”
Whatever the case, all media access must be approved in advance by the institution, and anyone who plans to publish content related to even a single prison visit must be under the direct supervision of the prison’s public information officer, or a designee. At San Quentin, gaining such permission is an arduous process, due in part to the huge demand for access that results from the high visibility and widespread public fascination with San Quentin. San Quentin “sells.”
Scores of in-prison educational, cultural, and recovery-related programs are in operation throughout California. Like MTC, many of those programs share information about their work inside, for example through emails and newsletters and on their websites. When programs or program participants disseminate positive information about their own work, for example, in an “uplifting” profile in a newsletter, a blog post, or a conference paper, without having received explicit prior permission, prison officials do not necessarily raise concerns.
However, published content that has been produced without explicit permission – particularly if viewed as controversial, incendiary, or disparaging of the State – may cause the individual author and/or their affiliated program to be reprimanded, temporarily barred from coming back inside, or simply shut down.
The Future
As Mount Tamalpais College’s mission statement makes clear, we are dedicated to equity, civic engagement, independence of thought, and freedom of expression. After thirty years of operation, we also understand the extraordinary complexities of working toward these vital goals in the prison setting. We have also come to recognize the enormous ethical and strategic importance of relating to those working within corrections as individual human beings who work in an often unimaginably complex, stressful, and demanding field.
Higher education as a field has long been painfully constrained by the reductionist opposition of abstract values and ideals to material or strategic concerns – each often attached to claims of moral superiority. And yet today it seems as if the university itself will not survive if we do not find ways to integrate – intellectually and politically – precisely these ways of imagining, in the service of the public good.
Perhaps the field of prison higher education will emerge as the most unlikely of common grounds, on which educators, advocates, their partners, and their allies learn to collaborate – to grapple together with highly nuanced realities, and develop strategies for doing good, far beyond the rigid identity camps and habits of privilege and formal power that have come to define so much of academic life.
We consider these struggles well worth the effort, and we are immensely grateful to all of you for your commitment to this work.
Jody Lewen, Ph.D.
President
Amy Jamgochian, Ph.D.
Chief Academic Officer
- See California Code of Regulations, Title 15, §§ 3250–3250.1 and §§ 3260–3261.7; California Code of Regulations, Title 45; California Penal Code, § 5058; CDCR Department Operations Manual (DOM) §§ 13010.1, 6, 10-17; CDCR Media Policies (https://www.cdcr.ca.gov/media-policies/).
