GOVX 2016: 37th and Jessup

In the Spring 2016 semester, Professor Marc Howard taught GOVX-400: Prison Reform Project, an innovative and non-traditional “inside-outside” course that brought together students from Georgetown and the Jessup Correctional Institution, a maximum-security prison in Maryland.  Working together, the Georgetown and Jessup students developed concrete proposals for criminal justice and prison reform.

The course culminated in “37th and Jessup: Classmates Divided by Bars, United for Justice,” a major event hosted by the Prisons and Justice Initiative on April 25, 2016, with over 200 people in attendance. The event featured the Georgetown and Jessup students’ innovative proposals for criminal justice and prison reform, captured by multi-media presentations, a five-episode podcast, and a short documentary, as well as more scholarly policy analysis.

The Washington Post Sunday Magazine featured this course as the cover story of its September 11, 2016 issue. You can also read about The Prison Reform Project in the Georgetown Provost’s blog post and the Georgetown Voice’s coverage of GOVX-400 as the first course in the Government Department’s new program of non-traditional courses.