Paper describes an Inside-Out Prison Exchange Program course at the University of Kentucky involving students (“outside”) and incarcerated ("inside") individuals in the Blackburn Correctional Complex in Lexington. The course examined the use and abuse of substances and their relationship to crime through the analysis of sociological and clinical social work theories. Sayre's paper explores the implications of the Inside-Out course for outside students’ reification and recognition of people who are incarcerated, and by extension, members of groups that typically receive social work services. 

The Inside-Out Prison Exchange Program was developed in 1997 at Temple University and founded on the premise that incarcerated individuals and college students had a significant amount to learn from each other when studying together in the same environment.

At the time the paper was published, the program was successfully operating in more than 300 prison institutions and college/university programs worldwide.