Inmates at the Parklea Correctional Centre, a jail in the Blacktown area, have been able to access university-class education through an innovative partnership with Australian Catholic University (ACU).
Since last year, ACU has been delivering the Clemente Australia program to students in Parklea’s minimum-security wing.
Clemente is an American program which empowers marginalised people by giving them the skills, confidence and knowledge they need to turn their lives around.
Earl Shorris, a social critic and author, founded it in 1995 with an inspiring and innovative vision. He believed that the humanities: “give people a sense of self, to see the world and themselves differently… People who know the humanities become good citizens, become active, not acted upon.”
Since then, Clemente programs have started in about 20 US cities and in Canada, Australia, Mexico, Argentina and South Korea. It was integrated into ACU in 2003.
Clemente’s coordinator at Parklea, Nyree Gale, says the program offers humanities subjects like history, literature, philosophy and art.
Successful graduates receive a certificate in liberal arts. If they continue with their studies, the four Clemente units could be credited towards an ACU undergraduate degree.
Clemente’s focus is holistic, Gale told The Catholic Weekly.
“They might not focus on developing knowledge in one specific field but they develop the skills required for people to continue on with academic study,” she said.
The reaction at Parklea has been very positive, with class sizes increasing each semester.
“We are now at our maximum amount of students per class,” she said.
“We’ve had 34 men over three units enrol and we have about nine or ten students who have continued through.”
She said that most of the men in the Clemente program at Parklea were approaching the ends of their sentences when they started.
“They’re all really motivated to get involved, to find out what study is like or even just what this whole thing is about,” she said.
“When they get into the assessment and reading, we find that it can be challenging, but that’s where it can be incredibly rewarding for the guys who realise what they are actually capable of.”
Gale said the students appreciate the Clemente program and the academic staff. She said that part of the program involves a volunteer from the wider community working together with a student to gauge their progress.
Gale said those participants in the Clemente course in other locations go on to do further study and there was a similar appetite inside the prison.
“The first unit in 2024 was called Global History, and that was about the interconnections across time between countries and cultures,” she said.
“The second one we ran over what would be called a university summer semester, because Parklea and the men who were enrolled were really keen to keep going.”
It’s early days for Parklea’s Clemente program, but Gale would like to see it extended to other prisons.
“The university is very committed to this program, particularly in this context,” she said. “There isn’t anything necessarily concrete yet, but the team would love to continue.”
