Together, we make change.
Before exposure [to academic programs in jail], I had been afraid of going to college and seeking higher learning. It turns out I was afraid of something that was not to be feared. I am actually very smart and the work really was not that hard after all.
—Student Voice From The Inside
Listen to our Director, Jia Johnson, discuss the importance of higher education in carceral settings.
The work of the Solidarity Building Initiative for Liberative Carceral Education at Cook County Jail was featured on an episode of Different Drummers.
View the complete video HERE.
Watch This!
Latest News
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Body-Centered Practices for Community Healing
Rev. Lis Valle, PhD, Quintin Williams, and Jia Johnson co-teach a transformative course on body-centered practices for community healing for incarcerated students.
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Prison Ministry as Solidarity not Charity
SBI Director, Jia Johnson, recently gave a keynote presentation at the Presbyterian Women of Chicago’s 2023 Spring Gathering on the topic of Prison Ministry as Solidarity not Charity.
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Students Behind Bars: The Voices of Community Healers
Regularly we feature the scholarship of McCormick SBI students who are detained at the Cook County Department of Corrections. Our aim is to celebrate their brilliance as student scholars while also changing the harmful and toxic narratives assigned to people behind bars. We invite you to be inspired and activated to join us in changing the narrative.
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Reflecting on five years of liberative carceral education at Cook County Jail
Celebrating 5 Years of Higher Ed in Jail. Join SBI on April 20th at their 5-Year Anniversary Kick-Off Pop-Up Event, “Through These Bars: A Behind the Walls Listening Party.” This will be the public's first look into the protest songs created by McCormick’s Solidarity Building Initiative incarcerated students at the Cook County Jail.
“In the four years that I have been detained in pretrial detention, I have received a better education than I did during my fours years of high school”
Take Action and be apart of something life-changing
Our work would be impossible to achieve without the support and collaboration of the wider McCormick community and the broader community of justice impacted people, faith leaders, scholar activists and healers and individuals in solidarity with people impacted by the criminal legal system.
Annually, we invite a wide range of community collaborators to offer input, shape the content, co-create events and join the program. As a collective, we co-create liberative learning spaces through a variety of learning modalities, communal healing spaces, book conversations, public lectures, teach-ins, et. Please meet and support the work SBI’s Community Collaborators.
