Meredith Van Zuiden | Assistant Arts + Life Editor

No not Fifty Shades of Grey, “The Grey Area,” a documentary exploring feminism behind bars and issues in our criminal justice system. This film was created by students attending Grinnell College and looks into the lives of female inmates at a maximum-security prison in Mitchellville, Iowa.

The Grinnell Liberal Arts in Prison Program allows student volunteers to teach liberal arts courses at prisons such as the Iowa Correctional Facility for Women in Mitchellville. The program was founded in the spring of 2003, by a Grinnell professor and four of his students after they decided to teach a creative writing class at the Newton Correctional Facility for Men.

The student run volunteer program evolved so quickly that by 2012, it had involved at least one out of every seven on campus seniors. Teaching incarcerated individuals is very unique to Grinnell College and has left lasting impressions on the student volunteers.

“[Volunteering] in prison has revealed and helped me challenge my own [subconscious] notions about race, class and gender. It has also pushed me to learn more about the US prison system and interrogate the way we as a society construct crime, punishment, and people who fall into those categories.” — Current Student

While teaching a class focusing on feminism at the Iowa Correctional Facility for Women, the student volunteers discover the reality behind many of their student’s lives. The reality is that many of the women inmates are mothers, victims of sexual abuse, drug addicts, victims of child molestation and

Mothers at the facility record their voices as they read children’s books; these recordings are later mailed to their families and given to the inmate’s child. Many of the inmates will never get their children back after they are released and have had their parental rights terminated.

Privilege has a lot to do with the situation these women find themselves in, many never had stability growing up and the place they have received the most opportunity is prison. The majority of women interviewed in the documentary; started doing drugs around the age of 12 while others had experienced abuse by family members.

The Grinnell Liberal Arts Program allows inmates in prisons throughout Iowa, to gain an education while their time. This a great opportunity for Grinnell students and the inmates to teach and learn from one another. “The Grey Area” demonstrated what is like for women in correctional facilities and the obstacles they have overcome.

Additional Sourcing:

https://www.grinnell.edu/academics/centers/liberal-arts-prison