Philosophy for Prisons: outsized thinking, on the inside

In this interview, SAPERE asks how he came to philosophy himself, and what can be achieved by teaching philosophical ideas and practising philosophical enquiry inside prisons.

“Philosophy is a fundamentally hopeful thing to do with your time.”

SAPERE: What first appealed to you about philosophy? And what keeps you writing, reading and teaching philosophy today?

Andy West: The way it keeps you in touch with possibility. The book is a lot about how formed – or deformed – my early life was by the sense of inherited shame that lingered after my dad, brother and uncle went to prison. That shame was a very fatalistic headspace where the only thing that felt possible was an inevitable condemnation. Philosophy was there to offer me  a ‘What if?’ In that sense philosophy is a fundamentally hopeful thing to do with your time.

Do you think everyone can do philosophy?

Many more people can if they are given the opportunity.

Recently my co-teacher was explaining consequentialism to a group of people in prison. As he filled up the whiteboard with the various moves of the utilitarian argument, one of our students burst out laughing. ‘People actually think all this?’, she said. ‘People have actually sat down and thought all this out seriously like this.’

They, like many of my students in prison, had not been given many opportunities to ask ‘What if?’ People in prison have often had difficult lives of poverty, oppression and adversity where they’ve had to adopt a survivalist mode of thinking where you just accept that ’It is what it is.’  But what I’ve found is when you give people the space to articulate, imagine and test ideas, they come up with fascinating and unique thoughts.

Why isn’t it more commonplace in prisons?

Prison is not primarily an educational institution; it’s geared around security. Also, positive interventions in prison do well to stay under the radar. If the Daily Mail runs a headline about prisoners getting philosophy classes then it would put pressure on governors to shelve the classes. Depressingly, prison practice is even more at the mercy of populism than schools are.

What do your students get out of your philosophy classes? How do you know if you’ve done something worthwhile?

I had one man in my class who did the course three times. He’s been in prison over ten years and had done every activity the prison offered. He was looking to alleviate the boredom. Another man said to me, ‘I told myself that I committed my crime because of predestination. But now I don’t think that’s true. I’m coming to your class to help find another explanation.’  I find working with people who are in the middle of an existential searching like that very satisfying.