A biweekly newsletter about the intersection of higher education and criminal justice. Written by Open Campus national reporter Charlotte West.

Short on time? Here’s what you need to know:

• This week, we’re publishing Part 2 of a Q&A with Erik Maloney, a lifer in Arizona, and Kevin Wright, a criminal justice professor at Arizona State University. They co-authored Imprisoned Minds, a book about trauma and healing published in December 2024, over the course of seven years. Check out Part 1 of the Q&A. 

• Lisa Kurian Philip, our local reporter with WBEZ Chicago, visited Cook County Jail to sit in on a book club hosting famed anti-death penalty activist Sister Helen Prejean. Sister Helen was celebrating her 86th birthday. Listen here. 

• We want to hear about your experience with college and career during reentry. Due to an overwhelming response we got to a LinkedIn post, we’ve made this survey to help inform future coverage in this newsletter. Please take a few minutes to share your insights! The survey closes Monday, June 16.

“Some guys don't want degrees—they want to help kids or their family.”

In the last issue of College Inside, we published Part 1 of a Q&A with Kevin Wright, a criminal justice professor who directs the Center for Correctional Solutions at Arizona State University, and Erik Maloney, who is serving a life sentence in the Arizona Department of Corrections. Together they wrote a book, Imprisoned Minds: Lost Boys, Trapped Men, and Solutions from Within the Prison, which was published in December 2024. They met in a prison classroom in 2016, and over the course of the next seven years worked on what eventually became a book focused on helping people in prison overcome trauma. There was so much good stuff in the interview that we had to share the rest of it with you. Wright and Maloney discuss trauma-informed teaching, the role of lifers in education, and what’s next. 

This interview has been lightly edited for length and clarity.

Charlotte West: Kevin, as someone who teaches in prisons, what does it mean to have a trauma-informed approach in the classroom?

Kevin Wright: I often feel uncomfortable with some of the workshops and classes that we do on the inside, because we create activities and experiences that challenge people to think about their past and usually bring up some tough stuff. Then we leave, and they may or may not have support.

One example: in one of the Inside-Out classes in the women's prison, we had students engage in a debate, arguing for the opposite side of something they believed in. One of our more vocal inside students was quiet the whole time. When I asked if she was okay, she said, ‘When people started arguing, I felt like I was back at home with my parents. And then it reminded me of my trial, where people were arguing about my future and I didn't have a say in it.’ We would never think that a debate might be triggering to someone. So trauma-informed teaching is about understanding what people have gone through, seeing it through their eyes.

West: Erik, you've developed a curriculum based on the ‘imprisoned mind’ concept, which focuses on helping people deal with childhood trauma. Can you talk more about that?

Erik Maloney: My class is called "Conquering Imprisoned Minds." I teach introspective techniques using writing as a therapeutic coping mechanism. I've adapted concepts from psychology to make them more understandable to the prison population, taking out all the academic jargon.

The main thing I'm proud of is what I call a ‘trauma timeline’—just a straight line on paper from birth to present with the definition of trauma at the top. I ask each student to think about anything that happened in their life using this definition of trauma, put a hash mark, and briefly write what happened and at what age. Then I ask them to write a paragraph telling what happened, who did it, and how it made them feel. From there, I introduce methods for developing empathy, forgiveness, and resilience techniques.

West: The fact that you created your own curriculum to accompany the book makes me think about the role of lifers in creating educational opportunities in prisons. What do you see as the role of lifers in filling some of these gaps?

Maloney: I've said for years that lifers are so underutilized in prison. It's all about punishment for what you're in for, and [the prison system] overlooks us as a resource. We are people who, if allowed to be educated properly, can teach courses indefinitely while also being a role model for those with shorter sentences. This gives the lifer meaning and purpose to do good again. He serves as a mentor, whether he likes it or not, to [those] people coming into the prisons. When they see him doing well, it inspires others to want to do well.

But if it's all about punishment, and a person has no meaning and no purpose in life, then all they have is hopelessness. With hopelessness comes despair, and with despair, you have rampant drug and alcohol abuse in prison, and violence stems from that.

West: Are you training other facilitators to be able to teach the course?

Maloney: I'm really excited about the direction my class is taking. The next one will be an all-Native American class. Right now my facilitator's manual is also being translated into Spanish so we can hold a class for [people] who don't speak English. I already have someone willing to facilitate it for me. 

West: You were only able to work with incarcerated men in developing this concept. Do you think the ‘imprisoned minds’ framework applies to women's prisons as well?

Wright: We actually took a segment of the book into our Inside-Out class with incarcerated women this semester to get their feedback. I was nervous about how they would respond, but the reaction was immediate and unanimous—they absolutely felt this applied to their experiences. While the specific traumas and responses might manifest differently, the fundamental concept of childhood trauma creating irrational mindsets resonated strongly.

What was particularly interesting was how they connected it to relationship patterns. Many of the women discussed how their past trauma affected their ability to form healthy relationships, often leading to situations that contributed to their incarceration. That's consistent with what we know about pathways to incarceration for women, which often involve relationships with partners engaged in criminal activity.

Maloney: My hope is that women who connect with these concepts might develop their own version of the curriculum that speaks directly to their experiences. Trauma is universal, but how we experience and process it can be very different.

West: I've also been thinking a lot about the different ways universities intersect with prisons beyond formal degree programs and classes. An Inside-Out class led to this scholarly collaboration between you two, but it also seems like many different parts of Arizona State have gotten involved with the criminal justice system.

Wright: When COVID hit and everything shut down, it was actually a good moment for us institutionally to push pause and reflect. I was thinking about our charter at ASU, which says in part, ‘We measure ourselves by whom we include rather than whom we exclude.’ When we approach people on the inside as people capable of good rather than simply criminals, it becomes a social problem we can bring social solutions to.

We see connections across all disciplines of the university that we can bring inside. For example, we took our interior design school—the faculty and students—into a facility to redo a classroom so that it's trauma-informed, and we did it alongside the people that are there. Now we've got this room in the women's prison that has a beautiful mural, carpeting to keep the sound down, and colors that are trauma-informed. It's a totally different space.

We're also bringing in art programming, English writing workshops, and other initiatives. I know higher education in prisons is the sexy thing, but it's not for everybody. A lot of people had tough experiences in school or don't even have a GED. It became almost uncomfortable that [higher education] was the only thing we were pushing. There are many different opportunities to invest in people on the inside.

Maloney: One of the things I teach in my class is what comes after the imprisoned mind. The last three lessons focus on pursuing redemption for the harms we've caused in an altruistic way—giving of oneself. I help people discover methods that fit that definition, and often it's learning something that can be of value to someone else and positively impact their lives. You don't need a degree for that. Some guys don't want degrees—they want to help kids or their family. I help them flesh that out and seek redemption, which gives them meaning and purpose while incarcerated, and goals for after their incarceration.

West: What's next for this project now that the book is published?

Maloney: Getting the book published was one challenge, but the real work is just beginning—taking these concepts and turning them into practical tools that can help people overcome their imprisoned minds. That's where our focus is now – developing methods that work in the real world of prison education and beyond.

Wright: What started as a class assignment seven years ago has grown into something that could transform how we approach rehabilitation in correctional facilities across the country.

Read Part 1 of this Q&A. 

Related: ++ “Reviving women’s stories and critiquing the carceral state”
++ “Scholarship behind bars”
++ “Trauma is unavoidable in prison. Here’s how educators can help.”

We want to hear from you!

If you are formerly incarcerated, please take a few moments to fill out this survey about your experience with college and career during reentry. What do you wish you had known? What were the most important sources of information about education and work when you came home? Let us know! This will help inform our future coverage and content in College Inside. The survey closes June 16. 

Let’s connect

Please connect if you have story ideas or just want to share your experience with prison education programs as a student or educator. You can always reach me at [email protected] or on Bluesky, LinkedIn, or Instagram. To reach me via snail mail, you can write to: Open Campus, 2460 17th Avenue #1015, Santa Cruz, CA 95062.

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