Inside-Out Prison Exchange Program

Inside-Out class

Inside-Out Alumni with President Strom Thacker, wife, and Pitzer staff & faculty, friends and family. (2025 Graduation Celebration).

“The Inside-Out program was a game changer. I realized there’s a whole world out there. Before, all I saw was a prison yard.” -Damian

The Inside-Out Prison Exchange Program is an educational program with an innovative pedagogical approach tailored to facilitate dialogue across differences. It originated as a means of bringing together campus-based students with incarcerated students for a semester-long course held in a prison, jail or other correctional setting. While those core Inside-Out Prison Exchange courses have been replicated across the United States and in multiple countries since its inception in 1997, the program has expanded into a variety of other forms of educational and community-based programming. It also has grown into an international network of trained faculty, students, alumni, think tanks, higher education and correctional administrators, and other stakeholders actively engaged with, and deeply committed to, social justice issues. The Inside-Out Prison Exchange Program Pitzer College Pathway to BA is the first of its kind.

View the current Inside-Out courses at the Claremont Colleges