Civic Engagement for the Future Criminal Justice Professional: Serving the Underserved in a Correctional Setting

Abstract

This project—Parenting, Prison, and Pups—is designed to help students think as socially responsible persons, in addition to understanding and caring about the world they will enter as criminal justice professionals. By becoming civically aware and involved, these students will be servicing one of society’s most underserved populations, female prisoners and their children. This program involves college students in remediating some of the most difficult problems within our criminal justice system, namely prisoner rehabilitation. Moreover, involving research as another level to this project is vital to understanding the effectiveness of this jail-based program, in addition to accurately investigating the experiences of participating students. This article not only examines the process of designing and developing a unique civic engagement experience for students, but discusses how four agencies were brought together as community partners to serve female prisoners, while simultaneously conducting research on an important criminal justice intervention.