This update was written by Keely, a member of the P4H learning community at the Southeastern Correctional Institution (SCI) in Lancaster, OH.
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March came and went quickly, though many of us welcomed the changes that spring brought to both the world around us and our learning community. New members are settling in and contributing fresh insights to their working groups and to our broader conversations. This month, we began reading and discussing Angela Davis’s Are Prisons Obsolete?, building on her ideas to engage in generative dialogue about capital punishment and prison reform.
Additionally, several project groups made meaningful progress. Our Storytelling Group reflected on community feedback gathered in February and is incorporating it into a script designed to share stories of vulnerability and the connections between lived experience and restorative justice. The Abolition Writing Group also received feedback, and two members created pamphlets intended for use both inside and outside the institution to support conversations about their work. Meanwhile, the Creative Arts Group celebrated the approval of our second ‘zine for external circulation—one of many milestones our community is proud to share.
As the days grew longer and warmer, we also took time to recognize moments of joy and accomplishment across the community. Many members devoted energy to projects important to themselves and to those they care about, and we were glad to celebrate achievements—both large and small—alongside Joni, Is, Owain, and many others. As a collective, we are also celebrating being awarded the 2026 Programs of Excellence in Engaged Scholarship. This award recognizes high‑impact collaborations between community partners and academia and affirms our shared work to resist dehumanization and advance the goals of prison abolition.
Our final meeting of March focused on preparing for what is, in its own way, another celebration: welcoming the Rockwood Fellows—a group of formerly incarcerated leaders from all over the U.S.—alongside employees of Jstor to our learning community. To make the most of our limited time together, we worked collaboratively to develop a clear and thoughtful plan for hosting. Throughout this process, we centered our commitments to abolition, egalitarian practice, and transformative education, paying close attention to how the meeting should feel and what we hoped to learn. Community members offered a wide range of perspectives on structure, introductions, and shared expectations. While these conversations included moments of tension, our collective commitment to this space helped us arrive at a plan designed to foster learning and connection—both within the community and with our guests.
Thank you for taking the time to read about our journey this month. We look forward to more moments of celebration, continued growth, and the warmer days ahead as we keep learning, dreaming, and building together.