In this class, prisoners and Georgetown students grapple with difficult lessons by Lucian Perkins

News

In this class, prisoners and Georgetown students grapple with difficult lessons

lucian perkins

Sep 9, 2016

Luckily, most of us have never experienced the U.S. prison system, where conditions and opportunities for reform are bleak. We are a "first" world nation with 5% of the world's population, but 25% of the world's prisoners. Georgetown Professor Marc Howard voluntarily teaches inmates at Jessup maximum-security prison in Maryland. When I first met him, he told me that his incarcerated students, who were taking the same class as his Georgetown students, were every bit as dedicated, thoughtful, and excited to learn.Like many people trying to reform the system, Professor Howard has had his own experience with the prison system. While he was in high school one of his classmates was wrongly convicted of killing his parents after police extracted a false confession from the 17-year-old by telling him that his father woke up from a comma (he was actually already brain dead) and told them that his son had committed the crime. The despondent boy, who trusted and loved his father, started to wonder if he might have somehow unknowingly done it. This particular police department, which had a 94% confession rate, put the boy away for 50 years. Fourteen years later Howard and others were able to exonerate him after the real killer was found. Last semester Professor Howard decided to bring his Georgetown class to Jessup prison and have them both work together on a project on prison reform. This is a story I pitched to The Washington Post Sunday Magazine. It runs this Sunday. Here is their story:

4,961

Lucian Perkins

Also by Lucian Perkins —

Opinion | Russell Lee didn’t promote himself much. His photos did the talking.

Parallels: Chechnya 1995/Ukraine 2022.

Feature: Double Take in The Washington Post Magazine

Premiere of Lucian Perkins' The Messengers

Dcist writes about my first Documentary: The Messengers

Banned in Babylon

Astronaut Piers Sellars

Heat of the Moment

Candidate Selfies

South Carolina