School of Criminal and Social Justice Students Get an Inside Look at Sing Sing Correctional Facility

Our School of Criminal and Social Justice does a terrific job each semester bringing classroom learning to life  with a variety of events and excursions. This Fall semester is certainly no different. 

SCSJ students recently visited Sing Sing Correctional Facility, getting an inside look at the maximum-security prison and the kinds of professional roles that support institutions of incarceration. 

Ten students took the 40-minute drive from the University’s New Rochelle campus to Sing Sing. The trip was part of Professor Sharon Stokes-Jett’s Prisons: Punishment & Rehabilitation in America class (CJ-202), providing students with theory in practice, giving them the chance to better understand the prison system and why people are incarcerated. 

Over a two-and-a-half-hour period, Sing Sing Superintendent Marlyn Kopp and Chief Wilfredo Perez, who is also a professor at Monroe, guided the students around the facility, allowing them to see the various roles that support the prison and experience a typical day for those positions. 

This trip was a perfect addition to this course, which explores the history and theory around prison management and criminal rehabilitation in a sociological context. In CJ-202, students engage in discussion around current treatment modalities, inmate subcultures, prison management and sentencing trends and learn about alternatives to incarceration and the latest in schools of thought about prisoner reentry. 

It was a unique experience that the students certainly enjoyed. Thanks Professor Stokes-Jett and Professor Perez for making it happen!