Teach-in on Race 2025

Emerson College launched the Emerson Prison Initiative (EPI) in 2017 at the Massachusetts Correctional Institution at Concord (MCI-Concord), a men’s medium-security prison. In 2022 EPI began offering courses at Northeastern Correctional Center and in 2023 EPI moved the degree-granting campus from MCI-Concord to MCI-Norfolk. EPI acts on the knowledge that college-in-prison programs can interrupt the cycle of incarceration. EPI offers the same courses taught on Emerson’s main campus, taught by Emerson faculty as well as guest faculty from other local colleges, and bearing official Emerson credits. EPI provides a pathway to an Emerson College Bachelor of Arts in Media, Literature, and Culture, a degree that combines Emerson’s unique strengths in media studies, literary studies, and the liberal arts.

The Reentry and College Outside Program (RECOUP) is an Emerson Prison Initiative program to support formerly incarcerated college students as they transition to life outside of prison. EPI recognizes that students can only consider continuing to pursue higher educational and employment goals once basic needs are met. Taking this stance as our foundation, RECOUP staff first assess a student’s needs, including food, housing, healthcare and employment, and then work to help the student meet those needs. RECOUP staff can help facilitate student planning and logistics for educational and future goals.

A collection of resources compiled by the Iwasaki Library IDEAS team to support research following the Education In Prison Conference.

Biannual publication of data on who is incarcerated in Massachusetts state prisons, including race, age, sentence length.

Weekly data on how many people are incarcerated in each Massachusetts state prison and in each county jail, both pretrial and post-conviction.

Additional demographic data and trends. Each dashboard provides a visual, interactive display of key data and allows users to view data in greater detail.

Data, graphics and reports on the Massachusetts carceral system, collected and presented by the non-profit, non-partisan Prison Policy Initiative

PLS is an organization committed to being anti-racist and whose mission is to challenge the carceral system through litigation, advocacy, client counseling, partnership with impacted individuals and communities, and outreach to policymakers and the public in order to promote the human rights of incarcerated persons and end harmful confinement. The office prioritizes work involving health and mental health care, assaults by staff, extreme conditions of confinement (including COVID, overcrowding, exorbitant prison phone rates), misuse of segregation and isolation, and racial equity.