WLWT: UC students experience realities of life in prison as part of a college course

“Once we kind of move past the uniforms and the security and we're all sitting at that table, we realize that we're all on an equal playing field,” Bennett tells Stone of taking students to the Lebanon Correctional Institution in Lebanon, Ohio, to learn about incarceration first- hand.  

WLWT came to UC’s College of Education, Criminal Justice and Human Services (CECH) to learn more about the “Inside-Out Prison Exchange Program” that Bennett leads, where eight students and eight incarcerated individuals discuss criminal justice topics such as sentencing, parole, life after prison and recidivism in a classroom setting.

“They're not just their worst mistake they've ever made,” UC student Grace Downey explained in the televised interview.

Downey says it brought the human side of criminal justice to the forefront for her.

“When you think of corrections, you think of all these people who've done terrible things. We don't think about the reasons why people commit crime or why they feel the need to do these things.”

The class, to include the program, was first taught in 2023 and will be taught again in fall 2024.  

Watch the interview.

Learn more about Bennett and the program.  

Featured image at top of J.Z. Bennett and UC students who participated in the "Inside-Out Prison Exchange Program." Photo provided by Bennett.