A college professor reaches out to incarcerated people, helping former and current imprisoned people tell their story.
Lisa Armstrong is a professor at the University of California at Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism and previously a professor at the Craig Newmark Graduate School of Journalism.
She studied architecture and urban planning at the University of Maryland and later earned a master’s degree in journalism from New York University.
Armstrong has taught journalism at the California Women’s Substance Abuse Treatment Facility in Folsom and at the California Correctional Women’s Facility in Chowchilla. She is currently teaching journalism at San Quentin Rehabilitation Center on Friday mornings, where she is on her second 26-week cohort.
The professor has been on the West Coast for nearly three years and says it has been a difficult transition for her. “Our Friday classes have been a high point, in various ways a clarification for what I am doing here.”
In a class appreciation day at SQ, one student wrote, “Thank you for the shared experience, you have been a true blessing, and a beacon of humanity in a place that oftentimes can be inhumane.”
Armstrong grew up in Kenya, where her family moved when she was three years old. She always wanted to be a writer; as a journalist she has taken an interest in reporting on incarceration. She has been visiting and conducting interviews with people in prison for about a decade.
“It is important for people to tell their own story. When it comes to the incarcerated, they do not get to tell their story. My interest is playing a part in that,” said Armstrong.”
She wrote an article for Rolling Stone magazine about Charles Moore, who was previously incarcerated at Sing Sing prison in New York. He served a 17-year-to-life term at the facility for the accidental death of an acquaintance, noted the publication.
In the article, Armstrong wrote how Moore grew up as an orphan; his father’s name was not on his birth certificate. His mother was stabbed by her boyfriend 17 times, which led to her death, when Moore was three. He eventually turned to alcohol and substance use to cope with his pain.
Because of stories like this, she has won the trust of incarcerated people. This has allowed them to freely express their childhood experiences.
“I do not treat them [incarcerated people] like they’re a story; I treat them like human beings,” the professor said.
She has interviewed people in Louisiana, Alabama, Florida, and Arizona prisons. The work she does is no charge.
Her first visit inside a prison was at a Michigan correctional facility. Armstrong says the clanging of the prison’s metal doors was a made her feel powerless
She attempted to visit a teenager in a New York state prison; he was deemed a disciplinary problem, and she was not allowed to visit him as a journalist and instead went in as a regular visitor. When Armstrong tried to exit the prison, she was prohibited from leaving — the guards said no one can leave during shift change.
As she finds it difficult to access some incarcerated people,. The professor says that respectable journalism requires that people report on both sides of the story, always communicating with people closest to the issues, even if they are difficult to reach.
Armstrong says society notices the un-housed in their everyday life, but when it comes to imprisoned people, they are far removed from society’s lives.
She reports on the incarcerated people as any news story; her curiosity is piqued by the fact that the United States locks up more people than any other country. This interest extends to the Death Penalty being used as a form of justice, and the fact that juvenile offenders are being sent to prison with no chance of parole.
“If you have not lived the experience of homelessness…you might care about it in some abstract way, but not necessarily enough to act,” said Armstrong. “It’s the same with incarceration, but in some ways more acute.”
