Initiatives and Partners
The Brandeis Educational Justice Initiative (BEJI) works with a range of partners who aim to reach those currently impacted by the criminal justice system.
For more information or to get involved, contact Rosalind Kabrhel at rkabrhel@brandeis.edu.
Our programs are designed to maximize the proven-positive impact of education on individuals impacted by incarceration. We deliver our programs inside prisons, jails, and pre-release centers, but also in the community. Our students in the community include individuals recently released from incarceration who are navigating reentry, as well as students who live in communities disproportionately impacted by incarceration.
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Partakers Empowerment Program (PEP) is a 13-week virtual workshop for people emerging from incarceration. Working with our community partner, Partakers, PEP eases the challenges of reentry with workshops on Technology, Health & Wellness, Civic Engagement, Education, Professionalism, and Personal Finance. Graduate and undergraduate facilitators design and lead these collaborative workshops. You can find more detailed information about our PEP program by following this link to our partner website.
BEJI faculty and graduate students teach academic courses at Boston Pre-Release Center, a minimum-security facility for men preparing for reentry.
BEJI faculty and graduate students teach humanities and legal studies courses to students in the Suffolk County HOC in Boston. In recent years, our courses have included “Understanding Media,” “Love and Money” (a literature class), “Being Better: Practical Moral Philosophy,” “Poetry and the Art of Survival,” and “Literature and Psychology: Adventures in Writing the Self.”
Undergraduate and graduate students can volunteer to tutor incarcerated students through BEJI’s relationship with the Petey Greene Program.
Changing Lives Through Literature (CLTL) is a collaboration between educational and justice systems to provide humanities programming through the transformative power of literature. In the CLTL program, probationers participate with a judge, probation officer, and a facilitator in a collaborative setting to discuss assigned readings. CLTL values sharing ideas and discussing what makes us human in a safe and collaborative environment. Learn more about this partnership between the Massachusetts Probation Offices and BEJI by visiting this page.
BEJI coordinates faculty and graduate students to teach credited courses or serve as teaching assistants at MCI Norfolk through the Emerson Prison Initiative.
If you’re interested in completing an internship with one of our community partners to get hands-on experience with the criminal justice system and the crisis of mass incarceration, students can reach out to Rosalind Kabrhel at rkabrhel@brandeis.edu for help with placement.