![\"FALL14remarkable-studies\"](\"http:\/\/ww2.georgiasouthern.edu\/news\/magazine\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/3\/FALL14remarkable-studies.jpg\")
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Each Friday morning they ride. The bus makes its way some 50 miles to Smith State Prison in Glennville, Georgia. The trip allows Eagle students time to share ideas and opinions about crime, criminals, the criminal justice system, and the effects incarceration has on families and communities.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen Georgia Southern students drive up and see the high fences and sharp-edged wire, it really hits them that this is something different,\u201d said Chad Posick, Ph.D., who teaches the Inside-Out Prison Exchange class to Georgia Southern students. On Fridays, students actually go behind the walls of a maximum-security correctional facility to attend class with incarcerated residents. \u201cThey go in scared because they do not know what to expect,\u201d said Posick. \u201cHowever, once they meet the inmates and start talking to them, they realize the incarcerated students are smart, and they can\u2019t wait for Fridays because this experience is so different for them.\u201d<\/p>\n
Every now and then, students need to take a break from classes like English 101 and General Biology to enroll in a course that is a bit, well, unusual. The criminal justice class called \u201cIncarceration, Family and Communities,\u201d has 15 \u2018outside\u2019 students and 15 \u2018inside\u2019 students. It counts as an upper-level elective and Georgia Southern students earn three credits for the semester-long course. Inmates who pass the class receive a letter to share with the Georgia State Board of Pardons and Paroles, to show that they have successfully completed a college-level course.<\/p>\n
\u201cMany are looking to turn their lives around, and it is interesting to hear their stories because you gain a better understanding of their background,\u201d said Posick. \u201cThe course gives them work to do so that they are \u2018doing their time\u2019 productively and challenging their minds, which are often subjected to the redundancy of prison life. The prisoners don\u2019t see many people from the \u2018outside,\u2019 so this is a refreshing change for them.\u201d<\/p>\n
The course also provides University students with invaluable lessons as they gain a deeper understanding of how the criminal justice system works. \u201cTheir view of prison life, which they usually get from movies and television shows, is drastically changed and more realistic,\u201d added Posick. \u201cMany say it has changed what they want to do when they graduate or had given them new tools for the jobs they still intend to pursue.\u201d – Sandra Bennett<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Unique Class Allows Students to Study Criminal Justice \u2018Inside and Out\u2019<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":5313,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[46],"class_list":["post-2393","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","tag-fall-2014"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ww2.georgiasouthern.edu\/news\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2393","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ww2.georgiasouthern.edu\/news\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ww2.georgiasouthern.edu\/news\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ww2.georgiasouthern.edu\/news\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ww2.georgiasouthern.edu\/news\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2393"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/ww2.georgiasouthern.edu\/news\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2393\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ww2.georgiasouthern.edu\/news\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5313"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ww2.georgiasouthern.edu\/news\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2393"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ww2.georgiasouthern.edu\/news\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2393"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ww2.georgiasouthern.edu\/news\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2393"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}