Toward achieving the unthinkable: Transforming conversations about criminalized others through servicelearning in correctional facilities

Building supportive communities and improving programming for incarcerated persons can be difficult due to stereotypes derived from culture, media, and personal upbringing. Such stereotypes, like the narratives from which they are derived, are socially constructed. To develop an understanding of how those narratives construct “others” and to transform stereotypes of incarcerated “others,” we adopted a communication perspective on the problem of overcoming stigma, designed a course to promote transformative learning, and employed service-learning as a way to bring students into contact with incarcerated men in a regional prison facility. Students’ reflections over two semesters in the service-learning course revealed that interaction with people who were incarcerated transformed their beliefs and values about those with whom they worked, resulting in an attitude of “just mercy” toward people who were incarcerated and making possible a more humane understanding of themselves and those members of our communities who are incarcerated.