The notion of incarceration goes back to the beginning of philosophy, with the imprisonment and execution of Socrates—and the idea, expressed by his student Plato in the Republic, that we are all imprisoned by the cave of our own reflections but don’t realize it. “[Prisoners] face a lot of the issues ordinary people face, but in a heightened condition. We’re all doing life in a certain sense,” Leder says.

The Baltimore City Paper has a story on the Jessup Correctional Institute Scholars Program and its founder, Drew Leder, whose comments about teaching philosophy in prison were among those featured in an earlier Daily Nous post.

UPDATE (5/1/14): Daniel Levine (Maryland), a teacher with the JCI Scholars Program, comments on the Baltimore City Paper article.