THE PRISON PROFESSOR

Leo Hylton is on a mission to teach away incarceration, one Zoom at a time.

- Abigail Glasgow

IN HIS 6.5-BY-14-FOOT cell, Leo Hylton keeps an unopened cherry-flavored Hint seltzer. Since March 2022, he's held on to the bottle as a prized possession, a "touchstone" that he says helps remind him of "the visceral feel" of the first day he spent outside the Maine State Prison in 12 years.

Hylton left for work. He's a co-instructor with Colby College's anthropology department. Alongside tenured professor Catherine Besteman, this spring for the second year running, he'll teach via Zoom from inside the walls about abolition-the movement to end incarceration. According to a number of experts in prison education, Hylton is the first professor of his kind in the United States.

Last March, the prison approved an unprecedented chance for Hylton to meet his students in person on their campus. He left under armed guard, wearing a freshly pressed blue button-down shirt and jeans-and handcuffs, belly chains, and hobbles that would clamp his legs if he tried to run.

"I'm going through this whole process of putting these restraints on, cheesing ear to ear," he remembers. Headed to Colby, he says, "I don't think I had felt more free in my life." In the classroom, Hylton-a large 32-year-old at 6.5 feet and 275 pounds, with a calming deep voice and a contagious laugh and Besteman began, as they usually do, by instructing everyone to make a circle with their desks. Only this Hylton could hear chairs being dragged. As he saw his students speak, he registered their voices and their position in the room. The escort officers joined in, following instructions from their charge-not the other way around moving furniture and taking part in the conversation he would lead.