LLM/MA Students Visit to Limerick Prison

On Tuesday 22 November, LLM/MA in Human Rights in Criminal Justice students visited Limerick Prison. This experiential learning opportunity facilitated graduate students to further their knowledge and enhance their understanding of contemporary criminal justice issues and to bring their classroom learning to life. The prison visit typically debunks myths and stereotypes of prison life and offenders. This is important in terms of offering the graduate student an opportunity for affective learning and to experience how the prison tour impacted personal ambivalence toward offenders, criminal justice policies and practice. Prior to the prison tour, one’s attitudes toward offenders and the criminal justice process might typically have been shaped by stereotypes and media images that the tour was able to debunk. Students experienced the prison environment and gained an in-sight into the workings of a operational prison in this state. This is important to remove discussion in seminars from the abstract and to facilitate student understanding of the practicalities associated with criminal justice and sentencing processes. Experiential learning opportunities for our graduate students is a useful way of stimulating critical thinking and active learning that academic seminars could not accomplish on the same level.