Coding with Conviction: Writing a Computer Science Curriculum for Incarcerated Individuals

Abstract

The United States contains 5% of the world's population, but 25% of the world's prison population. Incarceration has grown at unprecedented rates over the past half-century, and despite strong evidence that education is one of the key tools for reducing recidivism, improving employment opportunities and reintegration into society upon reentry, and saving taxpayer dollars, policies over the past few decades have decreased government spending on correctional education. As a result, educational opportunities for incarcerating people lag behind education on the outside, and this is particularly true in computer science education, where government bureaucracy and technological limitations pose particular challenges.

This thesis documents the creation of a computer science curriculum for incarcerated individuals, the attempts to teach it at a local correctional facility, and the eventual implementation as a course for formerly incarcerated people. It includes a survey of the state of computer science education in prisons and jails across the country, as well as an analysis of many of the issues facing educators and activists trying to implement such programs and courses. It documents the process of teaching this curriculum to formerly incarcerated people, the ways in which the curriculum changed as a result, and advice to educators on problems that may arise in implementing such a curriculum.

It also provides several resources the reader may find useful: the entirety of the curriculum itself, journal entries documenting the process of teaching the course, a series of interviews with people running programs and writing courses across the country, a set of interviews with formerly incarcerated individuals, including students from the course, and more.