Incarceration Nation: Transforming Classroom Inquiry into a Practical Project

In Upper School English teacher Heidi Hojniki’s elective, Incarceration Nation, seniors recently embarked on an intensive journey through America’s complex criminal justice landscape. For the semester, the students delved into historical accounts, policies, and the human toll behind mass incarceration by reading excerpts from Michel Foucault’s Discipline and Punish, Michelle Alexander’s The New Jim Crow, and Bryan Stevenson’s A Just Mercy, among other titles. The students ground themselves first on the prison system in the United States, particularly in the 20th and 21st centuries, as well as alternative restorative justice practices in the Norwegian prison system.

The students in the class also research statistics regarding the U.S. person system, like the rate of imprisonment, the rates at which we imprison people of color, and the rates at which we imprison men versus women. “The Norwegian prison system is always jaw-dropping to them,” Hojnicki said. “ It absolutely blows their mind. The maximum prison sentence there is 20 years, and they focus primarily on rehabilitation.” 

Hojnicki said she begins the course by asking the students whether focusing on punishment, public safety, or rehabilitation is most essential and discussing what our society believes is most important. The big question the class investigates throughout the course is whether or not the system rehabilitates people so that they can reenter society successfully after spending time in prison. Rehabilitation is ranked at the bottom.

Another class component is researching a prison-related topic related to specific texts: Just Mercy, Writing My Wrongs, Big Black, Last Stand at Attica, and Prison Riot. Students conduct interviews related to the text and design their own projects related to their learning.

This year, Hojnicki introduced another practical aspect to the class regarding the consequences of student plagiarism. The idea came to Hojnicki during an English department meeting when a teacher said they needed to review policy changes due to the rise of AI. 

“After the discussion,” Hojnicki said, “I wanted my student to look at this policy from a restorative justice perspective. Restorative justice is when all parties involved are harmed and need to come together to restore trust and harmony. There’s an integrity question within the community.” Hojnicki explained that academic dishonesty breaks the trust between the student and the teacher and the student and his/her classmates. Additionally, when a student has a lapse in academic integrity, Hojnicki said, the student is not developing the skill the teacher set out to cultivate in the student.

Using academic dishonesty as a prompt, Hojnicki asked the students to propose ideas for dealing with the issue. The class was divided into four groups, participating in class activities, iterating their ideas, and further questioning whether their proposals were sound. The groups then presented their proposals to College Counselor Matt Waldamn, Science teacher Alexa Tzanova, and English teachers Dan Gleason and Caitlyn Moriarty. Waldman was so impressed with the students’ ideas that he mentioned them to the Dean of Students, Kata Baker, who asked for the proposals.

The judges felt that the proposal with the most merit was for the student to be involved in a learning workshop where they could fully understand the wrong and the choice they made. Following the workshop, the student would teach other students about infractions.

Hojnicki is unsure how the administration will apply the ideas generated by the students. Still, she felt that the students provided much food for thought while offering practical solutions to the issue.