In 2019, academics from University College Cork (UCC) and Queen's University Belfast (QUB) developed emancipatory prison education partnerships with Cork Prison and HMP Hydebank Wood in which Criminology modules are delivered inside prisons.

The UCC and QUB courses are among the first types of emancipatory educational partnerships on the island of Ireland and both enable university based outside students to study alongside prison-based incarcerated students for on-going, semester-long, module.

The UCC Cork module is based on the US “Inside-Out Prison Exchange Programme” and is the first Inside-Out programme in Ireland. The Inside-Out Prison Exchange Program is a U.S. based, internationally applied, prison-university partnership model that brings together university-based students with incarcerated students in a semester-long, college level course delivered inside a prison. Developed in 1997 by Lori Pompa, a Criminal Justice professor at Temple University in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, the Inside-Out Prison Exchange program is an “educational program with an innovative pedagogical approach tailored to facilitate dialogue across difference” (Inside-Out Center, 2023). Since its formation, materials and criteria have been developed which has allowed for the replication of the programme across the United States and internationally (Inside-Out Center, 2023). To learn more, please visit: Inside-Out Prison Exchange Programme

The UCC and Cork Prison course, “From Criminal Justice to Social Justice,” is delivered by UCC’s Department of Criminology and Sociology and explores contemporary issues in Criminology around the topics of criminal justice and social justice, both in an Irish and international context. It is a 12 week second/third year BA Criminology module that is delivered to approximately 10 undergraduate criminology students and 10 incarcerated men in Cork Prison and continues after the semester as a Think Tank in the prison. 

The Queen’s University Belfast programme is affiliated with the UK based “Learning Together” model. Learning Together is a U.K. based prison-university partnership that brings together university students to study alongside students in prison for a degree level class over the course of a semester The programme was founded by Dr. Ruth Armstrong and Dr. Amy Ludlow in 2014 with a pilot partnership between University of Cambridge and HMP Grendon. To learn more about Learning Together more generally, see: Educational Partnerships Between Universities and Prisons: How Learning Together can be Individually, Socially and Institutionally Transformative

The Belfast course was initiated in 2019 and is delivered by QUB’s School of Social Sciences, Education & Social Work in HMP Hydebank Wood Secure College. Hydebank Wood is a unique facility in that it houses both women and young males (between the ages of 18 and 22, primarily). For the most part, these two populations are kept separate, including in educational provision, so the initial Learning Together course in 2019 was actually the first time a mixed gender cohort studied in the same classroom. The Learning Together course with QUB is the only opportunity for Hydebank residents to experience a face-to-face university classroom and interact with other university students The QuB coursefocuses on the impact of imprisonment on life after prison and the structural issues that impede re-entry. It also reimagine transformative future that students would like to see.

The TOGETHER project collaboration will now research the learning from these innovative approaches to university-prison education with incarcerated and university students in and across both sites. The TOGETHER project will unite these two prison-university classrooms in Cork and Belfast with a view to develop an all-island approach to convivial prison-university education.

This toolkit will be the first of its kind on the island of Ireland, adapted specifically to an all-island context, and moving beyond the imported ideas from the US and the UK.