Anyone looking for something to watch over the Thanksgiving Holidays would do well to check out the inspiring and fascinating “College Behind Bars,” airing on PBS stations on November 25. An extended trailer can be viewed here. The show focuses on one particular college-in-prison program, the Bard Prison Initiative (BPI).
BPI is part of Bard College, a small, private university in New York State. It enrolls just over 300 students, all of them serving time inside six different New York State prisons.
The show is four hours long, but the stories of individual prisoners and the program as a whole are gripping. One of the most interesting things about BPI is the very high level of the college courses taught there. Rather than remedial instruction, the students are learning about The Brothers Karamazov and high-level mathematics.