Tore Price

Tore Price (he/him) worked with Inside Out Prison Exchange Program ®, an organization dedicated to facilitating dialogue and education across social difference. Inside Out brings university students and incarcerated people together in university classes held inside prisons. As an alumni of the program Tore sought to understand what makes Inside Out so transformative? Conducting over 40 interviews with previously incarcerates students, non-incarcerated students, faculty, and program coaches, his report is a comprehensive study of the incredible program. 

Report

The Transformative Power of The Inside-Out Prison Exchange Program: Creating a Sense of Belonging In a Place of Oppression and Beyond 

The Inside-Out Prison Exchange Program has been around for more than 25 years. The program sends college based students (outside students) into a correctional setting to have a semester long class with incarcerated (inside student) students. This project was designed to discern the transformative power of Inside-Out,  how is belonging and connection engendered in its methodologies (the circle, icebreakers, small and large group discussions, dialogue), and how has the program affected students and instructors from a personal, relational, communal, and societally level (social-ecological framework) once the class was over. A combination of 40 inside students, outside students and instructors were interviewed either in focus groups, one on one interviews or a questionnaire. By using qualitative research methods over 14 themes emerged from my key questions. The findings show that Inside-Out has the power to transform lives through a well trained instructor who uses methodologies that bring about inclusion and connection. 

Inside Out 25+ Years of Changing Lives: Video Presentation 

Inside-Out is celebrating 25+ years of a unique and innovative pedagogy, in Philadelphia, PA (USA). This Canva presentation is a visual summation of the summer long research that captures the thoughts of the 40 inside students, outside students, and instructors that were interviewed to understand the transformative power of Inside-Out. This presentation is accompanied by a song written specifically for Inside-Out. The singer songwriter is Ari Kerstman and pianist is Rowan Tucker-Meyer. 

Community Engagement Initiative

Tore conducted 5 focus groups and 22 one-one interviews across 5 countries. Through these interviews and focus groups he came up with core themes, and found what makes Inside Out so transformational. Read more here! 

Read Tores’s Blog: Inside-Out Instructor Training: It’s Not Magic, It’s Intentional 

Bio

Tore Price (he/him) is a proud father of a 12-year-old son. Tore is a formerly incarcerated person and alumni of the Inside-Out Prison Exchange Program. He was first acquainted with Inside-Out as an ‘inside student’ in 2014, and has since supported the organization as a teaching assistant, training coach and now as a researcher. As a Training Coach for the Inside-Out Center, he co-facilitates training university professors on Inside-Outs unique dialogical learning format.  He is proud to have served in the United States Marine Corps and is passionate about helping children of incarcerated parents as well as furthering the Inside-Out model to different spaces. 

Keywords

Incarceration, prison education programs, Inside-Out, transformative, belonging, connection, social-ecological, recidivism, pedagogy, upward mobility