BEAVER, Pa. — On nearly every Tuesday morning since mid-January, a group of about 16 students has gathered at the Beaver County Jail.
Most are young, in their early 20s. They've come to Beaver County from all over the United States, as far away as California and Maine. They sit paired together at small classroom tables, listening to guest speakers, discussing textbooks and working on group projects.
At the end of each class, when the jail's thick metal front door slams shut, half of the students are on one side and half are on the other.
The class, simply titled "Criminology," brings Geneva College undergraduates and jail inmates together to talk about the justice system — how it functions, how it's flawed and its impact on communities and society as a whole.
And there's an added twist. Most classes feature a guest speaker who works in local law enforcement or the judicial system.
"It's not every day you get to talk to the same people that put you in here," said Geovannie Albertorio, 22, a class member who is serving a five- to 10-year sentence for armed robbery.
If there's one overarching theme to the discussions, it's this: The American criminal justice system is badly in need of reform.
That's one thing that the inmates, academics and most of the guests tended to agree on. Speakers included District Attorney Anthony Berosh, Detective Capt. Tony McClure and President Judge John D. McBride, who spoke to the class for the first time in the spring 2011 semester.
"I wanted to get across to (the class) that we judges even function within a system and we have restrictions on what we can do and can't do," McBride said later. "We have to keep working. We have to keep doing our job and discovering better ways to do things."
The idea for the class came to Beaver County Jail Chaplain Denny Ugoletti about four years ago, when he was thumbing through an issue of American Jails Magazine and read about a similar program affiliated with Temple University.
The basic premise was that bringing college students and incarcerated people together in a learning environment would benefit everyone involved, and create more informed, more open-minded citizens in the long run.
It works, Ugoletti said. He now sees it happen in Beaver County, semester after semester.
"It breaks down stereotypes," he said. "Many students come in here with a fear. They have these preconceived notions that inmates are gorillas, thugs, monsters."
And it lets inmates experience taking a college course with college students, reading the same books, doing the same work and taking the same tests. In about half of the seven semesters since the class began, Ugoletti said, an inmate student has had the highest grade.
"That was the first time I'd been in a class since I was 19," said Anthony Terry, who's now 26 and serving a federal sentence for possession with intent to distribute cocaine. "You're showing yourself you can still do things you thought you gave up on. ... You're not just this drug dealer that's locked up."
The class is extremely popular with jail residents, said Deputy Warden Carol Steele-Smith, who coordinates the program on the jail side. To narrow the list, she asks prospective students to write an essay about why they want to take the class.
It's so popular with Geneva students that Brad Frey, the sociology professor who leads the course, said it fills almost immediately when course registration opens.
The experience is transformative, Frey said, for students inside, as well as outside, the walls of the jail.
"As good as it is to hear the (guest speakers) present, it's the collaboration between the Geneva students and the inmate students that makes it work," Frey said. "The learning is so rich."
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