prison
Criminal injustice: Michelle Alexander on racism and incarceration
"The U.S has created a vast legal system for racial and social control, unprecedented in world history. Yet we claim to be colorblind."
by Amy Frykholm
Cell groups: Inmates and seminarians study together
Vanderbilt was not the first school to offer theological education in a prison. But it did pioneer the approach of having seminarians learn in company with prisoners.
Put away: Solitary confinement
The Geneva Convention forbids excessive use of solitary confinement. Yet the U.S. persists in using it as punishment.
Cellmates
Few know blindness so profoundly as prisoners who once could see the whole world but now find the universe shrunk to the size of a cell. Inmates hear only what jailers allow, most often some version of “We own you.” As for music, the rhythm of one’s own pulse must suffice, and that hardly leads to dancing. One can even forget how to walk.