When Eric Bronson first read Pete Earley's The Hothouse: Life Inside Leavenworth Prison as a freshman at Western Kentucky University, he was hooked.  He thought he'd embark on a career in corrections and maybe even become the warden of a federal prison someday. 

But, once he stepped foot in a college classroom to teach courses in sociology, criminal justice and corrections, he knew he'd found his forte.  Now, as a professor at Quinnipiac University in Hamden, Conn., he considers himself lucky to have found a career where he can combine his love for the classroom and criminal justice.

Recently, The Corrections Connection talked with Bronson about his background, the courses he teaches at Quinnipiac and his involvement in additional research projects.

Q: What do you teach at Quinnipiac?

Bronson:  [In the fall], I'll be teaching a class on crime in America.  It's just a general overview of criminology and our criminal justice system.  I will also be teaching Race and Ethnicity.

[During the spring semester, I will be teaching a class] called Prisons and Jails for junior and senior criminal justice and sociology [majors].  Generally, we look at the history of punishment, such as incarceration in Europe and then early incarceration in the United States.  [We also explore] prison architecture [and how] architecture influences punishment.

I [also] spend a couple of weeks on inmate communities, such as the inmate subcultures and I get into inmate relationships, both friendships [and] their relationships with their families on the outside.  [We look at] female inmates with their children [and] male inmates with their children [and] that contact that they lose.

And, then, I generally spend about three weeks on female offenders, specifically. [We talk about] the differences in why they go to prison, why they offend, how they must be incarcerated differently, the differences in treatment [for female offenders], the differences in the number of prisons [for women and] the differences in staff concerns.

I'm [currently] working on another course called Sociology of Punishment.  It's going to look over all forms of punishment through society, not just prisons.  [It will address] how we punish people in schools [and] how parents punish children.  It is also going to be acomparison class with other countries and the way they punish individuals.

Q: What is your background?

Bronson:  [I have a] bachelors and a masters degree in sociology and criminology, [both from] Western Kentucky [University].  [I also have a] Ph.D. in sociology [from] Bowling Green State University, [where I specialized in and taught classes in corrections].

I also worked at a [psychiatric facility] for a year [as well as] in a prison as a case manager for a year.

[In addition], I was [a professor] at West Texas A&M University for a year.   [There], I taught classes on offender rehabilitation, resocialization and societal reintegration.

Q: How has your experience in the field helped you to become a better professor?

Bronson:  First off, it gives me first-hand experience being able to agree or disagree with what is written in the textbooks. 

Secondly, the students see me as being credible.  What I am saying is real.  They understand that I have actually been in prisons, working in them, touring them [and] doing interviews with inmates.  They understand that what I am saying is legitimate.  I try to get them to not always believe what they are seeing on the television [about corrections]. 

It's [also] helped me with the network I have.  I still have friends that work in prisons or somewhere in law enforcement and [I am] able to call on them for assistance or to help students get jobs.

Q: What do you hope students take away from your classes, particularly the course that focuses on inmate culture?

Bronson: [I hope they realize] that the inmates are humans and that they've simply messed up or made a mistake.  They are not all predators.  Students today seem to be very punitive.  They want to lock them up and throw away the key, but I try and impress upon the students that they [may[ have broken the law just like the inmates have.  It's just that they have more social resources to keep them out of prison.

Q: What types of careers are you preparing these students for?

Bronson:  Anything dealing with corrections in terms of incarceration.  Hopefully not just officers or the custody side, but also administrators in prisons or jails.  The other thing [is that] I would hope it would prepare them for futures in inmate counseling or post-release counseling.

Q:  What is the most rewarding aspect of your job?

Bronson:  The interactions with the students.  When you see that light bulb go on it makes all those years of doing that dissertation worth it.

Q:  What type of research projects are you currently working on?

Bronson:  I am building on my dissertation.  What I did there was interview inmates about their friendship networks.  What I found was that [for] inmates, their friends can be very therapeutic and that's one of the conclusions I made is that the state of departments of corrections shouldn't be so quick to break up group of inmates simply because they think they're gangs.  [Having friends] could help inmates calm down or get through a tough situation they are going through at home with their wives or girlfriends or kids.

[I am] continuing to do research on inmate communities.  I'm getting ready to do interviews here in Connecticut prisons and I'm also working on some research related to the death penalty, specifically on the newsworthiness of it.