Because of the Color of my Skin: Addressing Structural Racism with Police Recruits and Returning Citizens

This article presents an ethnographic case study of dialogues between police recruits and returning citizens facilitated in the wake of the murder of George Floyd and the January 6th Insurrection. The dialogues were part of Police Training Inside-Out (PTI-O), a program that brings police recruits/officers into prison to study as peers with incarcerated citizens. The analysis considers how a group of largely white recruits were emotionally triggered by the perspectives of their classmates—a group of entirely Black returning citizens—and how that interaction generated a negotiated dialogue in order to bring the combined group to a point of common ground. This article demonstrates how PTI-O can aid in moving past ineffective police training methods to help navigate difficult conversations between officers and the communities they serve.