Blending scholarship with community engagement, Houston partners with Free Minds Book Club

Blending scholarship with community engagement, Houston partners with Free Minds Book Club

Stacey Houston, assistant professor of Criminology, Law and Society, studies the causes and consequences of justice system involvement. He blends his scholarship with community engagement by partnering with the Free Minds Book Club & Writing Workshop, an organization in Washington DC that supports individuals who are incarcerated or re-entering society. Free Minds’ mission is to introduce young inmates to the transformative power of books and creative writing. By mentoring them and connecting them to supportive services throughout their incarceration into reentry, Free Minds inspires young people to see their potential and achieve new educational and career goals.

Prof. Houston’s involvement with Free Minds began about a year ago, and he describes the experience as equal parts inspiring and eye-opening. Over the last year, Houston has co-facilitated a book club at the DC Jail with colleague Clint Smith, a writer, teacher, and doctoral candidate at Harvard University who also studies incarceration. Houston and Smith’s book club is held in the Young Men Emerging (YME) Unit. YME was created to provide a therapeutic and rehabilitative environment for young adults ages 18-24, which, research shows, makes it more likely that participants will have better life outcomes in the future. Each 90-minute session usually consists of a brief meditation, book-related game, reading aloud and book discussion, and creative writing. They typically spend about 4 sessions per book and have covered a wide variety of titles, including The Beastside: Living and Dying While Black in America by D. Watkins, Long Way Down by Jason Reynolds, and The Things They Carried by Tim O’Brien.

At Mason, Prof. Houston teaches courses on social inequality, crime and justice.  He has brought representatives from the Free Minds organization to his classroom so that his undergraduate students can learn first-hand about the challenges faced by young people who are incarcerated or recently re-entering society.

CSPAN-2’s Book TV program recently featured one of the book club sessions led by Houston and Smith at the DC Jail.  As Prof. Houston notes, the book club provides the opportunity for two scholars who study the problems of mass incarceration to connect with young men who have been impacted by the justice system over reading, writing, and shared experience.