Classroom Contraband — What They Don’t Teach You in Prison

The first time Missy held a copy of Our Bodies, Ourselves, she had to hide it inside a Bible.

Listen to the Audio Version! Click Here!

She’d borrowed it from another woman on her unit who’d somehow managed to get it mailed in without getting it flagged. They called it "prison contraband" even though it wasn’t on any official banned list. It was just about women—about real women. Bodies that bled. Bodies that had been harmed. Bodies that wanted to heal. Missy read it at night, under the thin blue light above her bunk, covering it with her sheets like she was reading porn or plotting an escape.

But it was an escape—an escape from ignorance, shame, and the constant medical neglect that wrapped itself around incarcerated women like a second skin.

That one book answered more questions than any nurse or counselor ever had. She learned how her birth control had affected her body. She learned what fibroids were—something her mom had and no one had ever explained. She learned that the pain she felt during sex might be connected to trauma, not something she had to “tough out.” She read about queer women, trans bodies, sexual agency, healing after violence. She saw herself.

And then one day, it was gone. Shaken down. Confiscated. “Inappropriate content,” the officer said. Just like that.

Education is supposed to be the beating heart of rehabilitation, the thing that transforms incarceration into opportunity. In theory, prison classrooms are where women can rebuild, reimagine, and re-enter society with skills and confidence. But in practice? Education behind bars too often functions like the rest of the prison system: performative, punitive, and paternalistic.

For years, prisons were called “crime schools” because people learned more about how to survive in the underground economy than how to build a stable life. But over the past two decades, peer educators, survivor-led programs, and small but mighty prison college initiatives have begun to shift that narrative. Inside, women are not just learning—they’re teaching. They’re guiding each other through case law, GED exams, and grief recovery. They’re mentoring each other, mapping out legal strategies, and explaining reproductive health when medical staff won’t.

Still, these acts of resistance happen despite the system—not because of it.

The truth is, most prison education programs are underfunded, outdated, and disconnected from the lives of the people they claim to serve. “Self-improvement” is encouraged—but only on the system’s terms. You can attend classes about obedience, relapse prevention, or Christianity. But try to take a course on feminist theory, queer history, or sex worker rights, and you’ll hit a wall of censorship. Books get denied. Course packets get redacted. Instructors are told to “stick to the script.”

Prisons say they want to prepare women for reentry—but won’t teach them how to advocate for themselves at a doctor’s office. They offer job readiness programs but skip lessons on consent, birth control, menopause, and STI prevention. They hand out hygiene kits without ever explaining why a missed period matters or how to track a cycle. Women inside often learn more about their bodies from each other than from any licensed provider.

The censorship isn’t just about books—it’s about autonomy.

Literature that affirms sex workers, survivors, or queer and trans identities is routinely denied as “inappropriate.” Meanwhile, women are expected to sit through mandatory programming that pathologizes their pasts, devalues their agency, and centers redemption only through compliance.

Missy’s story is echoed in cell blocks across the country.

Women create underground education networks to fill the gaps left by a system that claims to rehabilitate while actively withholding critical knowledge. They build libraries out of donated paperbacks. They host book clubs where they dissect bell hooks next to Danielle Steel. They draft each other’s legal motions, map out their menstrual cycles, and memorize the signs of common STIs. They don’t just study—they survive through study.

And let’s be clear: the knowledge they share isn’t abstract. It’s lifesaving.

Knowing how to navigate a landlord, a boss, a probation officer, or a hostile healthcare provider means knowing your rights, your options, and your body. Knowing how trauma affects memory means better understanding a courtroom. Knowing what hormones do during withdrawal or menopause means avoiding misdiagnosis or psychiatric abuse. This is all education. It just doesn’t come with a diploma.

The contradiction of prison education is glaring. Women are told to better themselves—but denied the tools to do so. They’re told to prepare for life after release—but given no knowledge about the systems they’ll have to navigate. They’re told to find new paths—but punished for reading anything that affirms the ones they’ve already walked.

What would it mean to take prison education seriously?

It would mean funding trauma-informed, peer-led, identity-affirming programs that treat knowledge not as a reward for good behavior but as a human right. It would mean hiring instructors with lived experience and letting incarcerated women shape their own curriculum. It would mean teaching reproductive justice, political theory, financial literacy, and community organizing alongside GED prep and vocational training. It would mean not treating self-awareness as subversion.

At SWOP Behind Bars, we believe education should empower—not erase.

That’s why we support incarcerated women in accessing books, courses, and mentorship that speak to who they are, not just who the system wants them to become. Because a woman who knows her body, her history, and her rights is harder to control—and harder to silence.

Break the Silence. Fund the Knowledge.

It’s time to stop pretending that prison education is working when it's been designed to avoid the most urgent truths. We need to invest in real learning—education that speaks to survival, resilience, and justice.

Donate to SWOP Behind Bars today to help us fund banned books, underground curriculums, and peer-led workshops that actually prepare women for life outside.

Let’s give them more than handouts and hoop-jumping. Let’s give them knowledge that can’t be confiscated. Let’s give them back their stories.

Closing the Chapter, Opening the Future

Education is more than a classroom, a test, or a diploma. For criminalized women, survivors, and sex workers, it’s a form of resistance. It’s a survival strategy. It’s a way to reclaim power in systems designed to keep us voiceless.

Throughout this series, we’ve challenged what education really looks like behind bars and beyond. We’ve named the barriers, lifted up the hustlers and healers, and made one thing clear: real learning starts when we stop gatekeeping and start listening.

At SWOP Behind Bars, we believe every woman—regardless of her past—deserves access to knowledge, support, and the tools to shape her own future.

Now let’s turn these words into action.