BREAKING BARRIERS UR Nursing professor inspires incarcerated individuals through spirituality course By Ivy Burruto
E
ach week, a stuffed, plain manila envelope arrived on her porch. And each weekend, Kristin Hocker, EdD, would pull journal entries from the envelope and sit with them a while, reflecting on the experiences and perspectives of her students. Then she would grade and comment on each paper and stuff them back into the envelope to be returned to her students at Groveland Correctional Facility. Hocker, an assistant professor of clinical nursing at the University of Rochester School of Nursing, began teaching her Spirituality, Religion, and Health course to UR Nursing students in the spring of 2020. That same semester, she debuted the class to incarcerated students at Groveland, a medium-security men’s prison located in Livingston County, about 40 miles south of campus. The Spirituality, Religion and Health course explores the religious and spiritual responses to health and human suffering through a health care provider's lens. “The course is especially significant because it analyzes one’s spiritual and religious journeys, even those who aren’t aligned with spirituality can still recognize there’s more to a human being than just a body,” Hocker said. “Even if not everyone is a provider, everyone is a patient and impacted by a provider-patient relationship.” The course was offered to Groveland’s students through the University’s Rochester Education Justice Initiative (REJI). The initiative, founded in 2015, has ambitious aims, such as abolishing the prison-industrial complex and redressing the impact of its systems. But in the shorter term, it is focused on providing opportunities for currently or formerly incarcerated individuals
to pursue their education at the University and collaborating institutions. For individuals that are incarcerated or formerly incarcerated, education is a major factor in their successful reintegration into the community and their overall quality of life. A recent study from New York University’s Brennan Center for Justice revealed that people who receive some form of post-secondary education or vocational training while in prison are estimated to have a 12 percent higher chance of finding a job after release, and are less likely to be reincarcerated. That number is significant when the lifetime earning potential of incarcerated individuals is reduced by half a million dollars on average. It also disproportionately falls on the shoulders of Black and Latino populations, who make up three-quarters of the 337,000 New Yorkers who have spent time in prison at some point in their lives. Last year, REJI was awarded a $1 million grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation to provide more academic offerings for both incarcerated and formerly incarcerated individuals, and bring together local higher education and community partners to build a network of advocates working to lower incarceration in the city and throughout New York. Hocker had attended several of REJI’s community events on campus. Inspired by their work, she submitted a proposal to teach a course through REJI’s college-in-prison program. Instructors involved in the program teach in an undergraduate program at Groveland as well as Attica Correctional Facility, administered by REJI in partnership with SUNY Genesee Community College (GCC). Incarcerated individuals with a NURSING 2022 Volume 1 29
