Our Mission
Transforming Lives through Education and Advocacy
Our Mission
The Justice Education Center at the Claremont Colleges provides transformative educational pathways, policy advocacy, and reintegration support for incarcerated, formerly incarcerated, and non-incarcerated students. Through the Inside-Out model, interdisciplinary curriculum, arts/humanities programming, and community partnerships, the Center challenges racial injustice, reduces recidivism, increases awareness of mass incarceration’s impacts, and promotes human dignity across all backgrounds. The Center cultivates ethical growth while creating replicable models for higher education in prisons and reintegrating formerly incarcerated individuals into society.
Our Goals
Develop
- Support Claremont College students and incarcerated and formerly incarcerated college students engaged with justice education through classes and community-based programs related to the criminal justice system.
- Grow Inside-Out Prison Exchange Program courses opportunities at more regional carceral and re-entry institutions
- Develop an intercollegiate academic program (minor and major) for justice education
- Host Lecture Series and Research workshops and white papers that advance justice education, abolition, community engagement, coalition-building and mutual aid
- Reintegration and Reentry Support for justice-impacted individuals
- Advocacy and Public policy reform of California’s criminal justice system
Expand
- Inside-Out Prison Exchange Program courses at the California Rehabilitation Center and establish Inside-Out courses at the California Institution for Women
- Community partnerships and projects focused on criminal justice education and policy
- Support for formerly and currently incarcerated students through Pitzer College’s New Resources Program
Support
- Student learning and involvement in justice education across the Claremont Consortium
- Incarcerated students’ opportunities for enrollment in credit-bearing courses to the benefit of transfer and degree completion, as well as re-entry
- Public policy reform of California’s criminal justice system
Our Aims and Values
- Educate students on issues related to the criminal justice system and prison education through on-campus as well as semester-long, credit-bearing courses in the Inside-Out Prison Exchange Program.
- Understand the historical, political, and socioeconomic context of mass incarceration, as well as its deleterious impacts on the families and communities it affects.
- Connect issues related to the criminal justice system and prison education through workshops, lecture series, film series, and art exhibits at The Claremont Colleges.
- Imagine a world in which people’s needs are met, and harm is prevented by addressing injustice, inequity, and violence as root causes of incarceration; a world in which we work together toward justice and healing through restoration rather than punishment.
- Act decisively from an interdisciplinary framework to drive change in conversations, policies, and systems pertaining to mass incarceration.