Bahiyyah M. Muhammad, Ph.D., is an Associate Professor of Criminology in the Department of Sociology at Howard University (HU) in the District of Columbia (DC). Dr. Muhammad is also Founding Director for the Higher Education in Prison (HEP) Programming across all three campuses at the university and the HU Andrew Rankin Memorial Chapel. To date, Professor Muhammad has spearheaded HEP courses and innovative programs offered through Howard University’s Schools of Law, Divinity, Communications, Fine Arts and the College of Arts and Sciences. These graduate seminars and undergraduate classes have occurred in partnership with the Federal Bureau of Prisons (BOP), the DC Department of Corrections (DCDOC), the Virginia Department of Corrections (VADOC) and the Department of Youth Rehabilitation Services (DYRS) detention facilities in Maryland and Washington, DC. To date, approximately one thousand howard students, alumni, faculty, incarcerated, and formerly incarcerated individuals have participated in classes inside prisons, jails and detention facilities in D.C., Maryland and Virginia. Under Dr. Muhammad’s leadership, Howard University became the first HBCU to offer award winning post-secondary education to incarcerated females, males, detained juveniles and their families, simultaneously.
Most recently, Dr. Muhammad was selected as a 2020-2021 Mandela Washington Reciprocal Exchange Fellow for the U.S. Government’s Young African Leaders Initiative (YALI) and the International Research & Exchanges Board (IREX). Through this fellowship, Dr. Muhammad will spend the year working with an African Leadership Fellow to expand prisoner and juvenile refugee programming in the Kingdom of ESwatini (known as Swaziland), located in Southern Africa. Specifically, Dr. Muhammad will travel to Swaziland to provide face-to-face expert consultation at Mawelawela Correctional Centre and Mpaka Refugee Camp for STEM classes and empowerment programming for detained female youth. In 2017, Dr. Muhammad served as a Franklin Fellow at the U.S. Department of State. In this position, she reviewed the U.S. policy on human rights for children and helps to design new approaches to assist the U.S. government in addressing the issue. Dr. Muhammad served within the Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights and Labor in the Office of Multilateral and Global Affairs. Furthermore, Dr. Muhammad has been the recipient of various service awards for her engagement with correctional facilities. Most recently, she was a Featured Honoree for Voices for A Second Chance-50the Anniversary Gala and was award the Carolyn Cross Community Impact Award for her groundbreaking work with the DC Department of Corrections.
In addition, in 2018, Dr. Muhammad was awarded with the George Strawn Volunteer Award for her innovative programming and college courses offered to scholars in the DC Jail’s Correctional Treatment and Detention Facilities. Dr. Muhammad’s prison services were also awarded by the Federal Bureau of Prisons in 2016. She was recognized as Volunteer of the Year for her MOM Camp program that allowed children of incarcerated parents to “sleepover” at a federal prison camp with their incarcerated mothers who completed her college course, “Special Topics: Children of Incarcerated Parents”. In 2015, she received a Human Rights Award from the New Jersey Education Association, which was an advocacy award for her service to school-aged children affected by parental incarceration. This work was highlighted through the Newark Public Schools Superintendent in 2018, in the VICE of HBO Segment with Michael K. Williams, entitled “Raised in the System”, which she worked with Newark Elementary Students of the incarcerated. This film highlights success and resilience among those affected by mass incarceration and is aligned with Dr. Muhammad’s recent TED talk on this topic.
For more than a decade, Dr. Muhammad has been conducting groundbreaking research on the children of incarcerated parents and the consequences of parental incarceration on children. Dr. Muhammad has done hundreds of interviews with affected children and parents in the United States, Uganda, Cambodia, Vietnam, Malaysia, Thailand, and the United Arab Emirates. She has published research on the impact of parental incarceration - from witnessing a parent’s arrest by police to the physical and emotional separation resulting from actual incarceration - on children, their parents, and familial bonds, as well as children’s success stories. Dr. Muhammad is co-founder of Project Iron Kids, an initiative to educate and empower children of incarcerated parents. She co-published the first coloring book for children of the incarcerated, titled The Prison Alphabet: An Educational Coloring Book for Children of the Incarcerated. Her work has been translated in Spanish, Arabic, Chinese and French. In addition, Dr. Muhammad is the author of two criminal justice textbooks, has a co-authored book Credible Messenger Mentors in D.C. in production with Temple University Press. Her most recent co-edited anthology, “Social Revolution: Black Children of Incarcerated Parents Speak Truth to Power” (Routledge Press), challenges the field to explore the positive experiences among children affected by parental incarceration. She has also co-edited “Mothering From The Field” (Rutgers University Press), that explores motherhood at the intersection of field research. Her scholarship has been published in Criminal Justice and Behavior, Social Problems, the Peabody Journal of Education, Journal of Criminal Justice and Law Review, the Journal of Gender, Social Policy and the Law, the Mother Studies Journal, and the American University Business and Law Review.
Dr. Muhammad has served as an invited speaker inside prisons, jails and detention centers around the world. Her research, innovative programming, study abroad enrichment sessions and college courses have exposes students to global issues of imprisonment in Africa, Asia, Europe, the United Arab Emirates and the United States of America. Dr. Muhammad is an innovative educator that utilizes a radical pedagogy to engage students in an intellectual journey that is described as, “empowering”, “transformative”, “critical” and “freeing”. Her classes have been dubbed the “Dr. Muhammad Experience” and have won her the title of Professor of the Year 2014, 2015, 2017 and 2019. In addition, Dr. Muhammad voluntarily lived in a cell for a weekend (January 15-17, 2016) to gain a more holistic understanding of life behind prison walls. Dr. Muhammad is a unique educator working strategically to change the landscape of higher education, as it is known today. Dr. Muhammad was recently nominated for the very prestigious Global Teachers Prize for her groundbreaking instruction. Professor Muhammad’s newest revolutionary course, the only of its kind in the world, Policing Inside Out initiated through a partnership with the International Association of Chiefs of Police, brings together law enforcement officers and black millennials to engage in brutally honest dialogue, trust building excursions and critical readings on minority community-police relations. Now offered at Morgan State University and Coppin State University, Policing Inside Out has transformed the ways in which inter-departmental law enforcement agencies police in Black communities.
Prior to Dr. Muhammad’s academic tenure, she served as Director of the College Bound Consortium (CBC), a HEP program founded in 2010 to educate incarcerated persons in New Jersey. The CBC was facilitated at Edna Mahan Correctional Facility for Women (EMCF) in Clinton, NJ through a partnership between Drew University, Raritan Valley Community College (RVCC) and the Drew Theological School’s Partnership for Religion and Education in Prison (PREP). During this time, Professor Muhammad taught classes at EMCF and Northern State Prison (NSP) and arranged for faculty across both campuses to teach a variety of courses to approximately 200 incarcerated women in New Jersey.
Dr. Bahiyyah M. Muhammad received her B.A. in Administration of Justice with a minor in Psychology and a Criminology Certificate from Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey in New Brunswick. She received her M.A. in Corrections Administration from John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York City. Her Ph.D. in Criminal Justice with a specialization on children of incarcerated parents was received from Rutgers University, School of Criminal Justice in Newark, New Jersey. Professor Muhammad has taught courses at The New School-Urban Studies Department, West Chester University-Department of Criminal Justice, Rutgers University-School of Criminal Justice and currently serves as a tenured faculty member at the Howard University.
Work, Poverty and Criminal Justice
The New School of Liberal Arts
2013
Criminal Justice
Rutgers University
2011
Corrections Administration
John Jay College of Criminal Justice
2004
Administration of Justice/Criminology Certificate
Rutgers University (New Brunswick)
2002
Family Law/ Psychology
University of Natal, Pietermaritzberg (South Africa)
2001
Howard University's Freshman Experience is a single-credit, pass or fail course offered every fall semester. This course is required of all First Time In College (FTIC)/Freshman students. The course is designed to ease the student's transition from high school to college life and prepare students for collegiate success beyond their first year. In addition, this interdisciplinary cohort experience will center on applied learning and innovative pedagogy through critical debates clustered around required readings, guest speakers, local excursions, current events, and emerging contemporary themes. Students will identify, discuss and reflect upon academic, career, and personal goals. Seminar participants will be introduced to the legacy of Howard University and unique opportunities for building Howard pride by becoming acquainted with the higher learning landscape and being immersed into the culture of Chocolate City and the Greater Washington, D.C. metro community.
This introductory National Educational Equity Lab (NEEL) partnership course serves as a foundation into the criminal justice system. In this course students will explore the key concepts of the criminal justice system and critically think about issues emerging in 21st century media. In addition, students will debate current controversy as it relates to the principles of criminal justice. Students are challenged to consider a range of criminal justice policy debates raised by the following questions: What components make up the criminal justice system?, How is crime defined and measured?, How is the system used to deter crime and promote peace?, Who is affected by the criminal justice system? How?, What are the theoretical explanations of criminal behavior?, What are the emerging issues for the 21st century in criminal justice?
This course is a unique opportunity to explore issues of crime and justice from inside a correctional facility. The course brings together Howard University students and students who are incarcerated to learn about and discuss topics such as the causes of crime, victims, the rationale of the criminal justice system, and restorative justice. Through the readings and dialogue, inside and outside students will be able to integrate their theoretical knowledge with lived experiences. It is through this exchange the course allows students to critically analyze and challenge the current system in the U.S. that has resulted in a higher incarceration rate than other similar countries. Each week various topics are discussed. With the successful completion of the course students receive and official certificate of completion endorsed by Howard University and the partnering correctional facility.
This course is a unique opportunity to explore issues of crime and justice from inside a correctional facility. The course follows a similar course content format as stated above. The course is writing intensive and satisfied the university requirement for a third-writing course. As such, assignments consist of weekly five-page reflection papers that must be submitted at the end of each session. In addition, all students write a reflection on the required in-service volunteer training and experiences during the closing ceremony. At the completion of the course all students will submit a total of 15 journal reflections, to total 45-75 pages of written reflections.
This course examines the historical, social, and economic dimensions of mass incarceration and its profound impact on Black families in the United States. Through an interdisciplinary approach, students will explore the origins and policies fueling mass incarceration, analyze its effects on family structures, and discuss pathways toward justice and reform. Topics include the prison-industrial complex, intergenerational trauma, the economic burdens of incarceration, and community resilience. Students will engage in critical discussions, multimedia analysis, and collaborative projects to deepen their understanding of the topic.
This course critically analyzes the effects of incarceration on minor and adult children who have experienced parental imprisonment. During this course students will systematically review the process and impacts of parental incarceration, to include: arrest (entry into the criminal legal system), incarceration (physical and psychological separation, obstacles to visitation and contact), reentry (reestablishing parental relationships and dealing with changing household relationships and dynamics) and re-incarceration (a parent’s entry into the criminal legal system with prior criminal history). At the conclusion of the course, students will be able to: Discuss the impact of parental incarceration on their children, Identify the potential collateral consequences of parental incarceration, and Describe programs that have been developed to keep parents connected to their children during and after incarceration.
This honors social science course will provide students with experiential learning opportunities inside local prisons, jails, detention centers, with law enforcement, and othercriminal legal system officials. Seminar discussions will be structured around social justice frameworks and city life to center the thoughts, narratives, and philosophies of currently and formerly incarcerated Black people and their families. Seminar content will revolve around in(justices) within the criminal legal system, nationally and abroad from the prism of directly impacted Black communities. All students are required to participate in on-campus and off-campus activities, weekly field-journal presentations, Justice Sundays Open Dialogue at HU and a 7-day study abroad experience in Paris during Spring Recess (March 1 – March 10). This social science seminar will shed light on national and global social (in)justice topics, with many of the discussions being guided by a crime and city life comparative analysis of DC and Paris.
In Preperation. TBD.
The School to Prison Pipeline has become a popularized term, often used without full understanding of what it truly means, how this label affects youth, and the ways in which it shapes the consciousness and policy of schools across that nation that have come accustomed to creating the Black delinquent. Through this social justice course, we will explore the history of youth of color in the juvenile legal system, through the story of Black youth, specifically detained and incarcerated Black youth. In the United States the conversation about the juvenile legal system often is limited to the experiences of White affluent youth, without mention of the violent and dehumanizing experiences that led to the create of the system that continues to erase, exploit, and miseducate Black children and young adults. We are studying the School to Prison Pipeline as a lens to explore this history since it is one of the main avenues by which Black people remain contemporarily enslaved within the detention industrial complex. Black youth, their families and hoods have always served as a means of helping them achieve liberation, knowledge, respect and understanding and it is a struggle that continues today.
Program Mentor Award, Research Development Institute CJR Hidden Curriculum Fellow Summit, TSU, 2025
Inaugural CETLA Fellow, Howard University Center for Excellence in Teaching, Learning and Assessment, 2024 -2026
Inaugural Honors Faculty Fellow, Howard University College of Arts and Sciences Honors Program, 2023-2026
Lumen Circles Fellow, Online Teaching Foundation, CETLA, 2021
D.C. Department of Corrections (DCDOC), Research and Policy Fellow, 2019
United States Department of State, Franklin Fellow-Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor Office, 2017-2018
HU ADVANCE-IT Follow-the-Leader Fellowship Project: Publish Never Perish, 2016
HU ADVANCE-IT Writing Retreat Fellow, 2015
Advanced Summer Faculty Research Fellowship, 2015
HU Teach 2 Teaching with Technology Fellowship, 2015
Summer Faculty Research Fellowship, 2014
Trailblazer Civic Award- Outstanding Social Justice Research, Women Ambassadors Foundation, 2023
Institute for Advanced Studies in Culture, Research Fellow, 2020-2023
Mandela Washington Reciprocal Exchange Fellow, International Research & Exchange Board (IREX), 2020-2021
Assessment Fellow, Howard University Institutional Research and Assessment, Office of the Provost, 2019
Trailblazer Award for Groundbreaking Achievement in Research and Scholarship, Black Muslim Psychology Conference, Muslim Wellness Foundation (Philadelphia, PA), 2018
Summer Fellow, Junior Faculty Writing and Creative Works Retreat, 2018
Summer Fellow, Howard University Interdisciplinary Research Retreat, 2016
Most Outstanding Presentation by Junior Faculty Researcher, Howard University, Research Day, 2014
Excellent Paper Presentation, Howard University, Leslie H. Hicks Research Symposium, 2014
Outstanding Teacher Award (Associate Professor), College of Arts and Sciences, Howard University, 2021-2022
Professor of the Year, Howard University, Excellence Awards, Bison Ball, 2019
Summer Teaching Fellow, HU Teach VI, CETLA 2018
Female Faculty Member of the Year, Nomination, HBCU Digest, 2018
Global Teacher Prize, Nomination, 2017
U.S. Marines Campus Hero-Fox 5 News, 2017
Professor of the Year, Howard University, Excellence Awards, 2017
Teaching with Technology Conference Presenter Certificate, CETLA, 2016
Teaching with Technology Award, Center for Excellence in Teaching, Learning and Assessment, 2016
Professor of the Year, Howard University, Excellence Awards, 2015
Professor of the Year, Howard University, Excellence Awards, 2014
Heroes of Hope, DC Department of Corrections, 2024
Partner Impact Award, The DC Department of Corrections, 2024
Appreciation Award, The Metropolitan Police Department, Cadet Corp Branch, HSCC, 2023
Robert L. Perry Mentoring Award, Association for Ethnic Studies, 2023
Appreciation Award, The Metropolitan Police Department, Cadet Corp Branch, HSCC, 2023
Featured Honoree, Voices for A Second Chance-50th Anniversary Gala (Washington, DC), 2019
George Strawn Volunteer Award, District of Columbia-Department of Corrections (DCDOC), 2018
“Liberating the Free” Visionary Award, Not Without My Hijab National Committee, 2018
Community Role Model Award, MOM Network (Arlington, VA), 2018
Community Service Award, SMILE Inc., 2016
Volunteer of the Year, Bureau of Prisons- Alderson Federal Prison Camps, 2016
Human Rights Award, New Jersey Education Association, Advocacy Award, 2015
Certificate of Completion, D.C. Mandated Reporter, 2025
Certificate of Completion, Petey Greene Program Virtual Training, 2025
Certificate of Appreciation, DC Correctional Detention Facility (DC Jail), 2024
Certificate of Completion, Women in Leadership, Harvard Division of Continuing Education, 2023
Certificate of Completion, Teens and Police Service (TAPS) Academy, 2023
Certificate of Appreciation, Metropolitan Police Department- The Cadet Corp Branch, 2023
Certificate of Appreciation, DC Department of Corrections, 2018
Certificate of Appreciation, DC Jail- Young Men Emerging Unit, 2018
Certificate of Recognition, Mayor Catherine E. Pugh-City of Baltimore for Baltimore City Youth and Girls Expecting More Success, Inc., 2017
Read: HU New Service | Redefining Protect and Serve: How One Howard Professor Muhammad Is Bridging the Trust Gap Between D.C. Residents and Police
Read: The Howard Magazine |Resilient Black Love Among Children of Incarcerated Parents
Read: WHUT | Dr. Bahiyyah Muhammad: Champion for Incarcerated Families
Read: WUSA9 | To take this professor’s criminal justice class, you have to go to jail
Read: The Washington Post | Nick Cannon takes a weekly Howard class where he visits a D.C. jail and learns with inmates
Read: The Washington Post | D.C. police, Howard University to host community forums on law enforcement
Read: The Howard Magazine | 'The Dr. Muhammad Experience'
Read: The Howard Magazine | Where Education Is Couture: The ‘Dr. Muhammad Experience’
Breaking Generational Curses: Success and Opportunity among Black Children of Incarcerated Parents
Black children are disproportionately represented among the children of incarcerated mothers and fathers in the United States. Research has largely focused on negative life outcomes (e.g., incarceration, negative behaviors, school dropout rates) of these children. Findings center on the ways adult Black children of incarcerated parents define success, which differs from middle-class, Eurocentric definitions of economic success, college graduation, marriage, and children as the success indicators. Success in relationships, community, education, and mental health emerged as the themes that define success.
“We Have Unique Experiences”: Familial Socialization of Children of Incarcerated Parents
As millions of parents are held behind bars, there is a growing concern not only for the outcome for these individuals, but for their children. Researchers have pointed to familial socialization as a way for children to navigate their perceived social identities and combat negative outcomes. Thus, this study explored how family members mitigate adverse life outcomes for 82 adult children of incarcerated parents in a similar function as other social identifications. The findings illustrate four interconnected agents of parental incarceration socialization: “the talk,” familial beliefs, relationship with the incarcerated parent, and expression and navigation. Similar to other social identities, a socialization process occurs for children of incarcerated parents, which informs how they should navigate society.
Why Race Matters for Higher Education in Prison
This essay will address issues of racial inequity and injustice within higher education in prison programs—examining issues of faculty diversity, pedagogy, and barriers students impacted by the criminal legal system face in continuing their higher education upon release. In addressing these barriers, there is an opportunity to overcome racial inequity at a massive scale and set an example, both for higher education communities and society as a whole.
Although African Americans make up a mere 13% of the U.S population, they comprise over 40% of young adult inmates in jails and prisons. To date, one in twenty-three white males are sentenced to jail in their lifetime as compared to one in four black males.' These numbers are likely to be most prevalent amongst minority male students from low socio-economic backgrounds, whose school districts have less resources. To this extent, disproportionate mass incarceration continues to produce long-term
detrimental effects such as: 1) reinforcement of violent behavior and attitudes; 2) limited education; 3) exacerbated mental health issues and learning disabilities; and 4) increased future involvement in the criminal justice system.
Mothering from the Field: The Impact of Motherhood on Site-Based Research
Mothering from the Field offers both a mosaic of perspectives from current women scientists’ experiences of conducting field research across a variety of sub-disciplines while raising children, and an analytical framework to understand how we can redefine methodological and theoretical contributions based on mothers’ experiences in order not just to promote healthier, more inclusive, nurturing, and supportive environments in physical, life, and social sciences, but also to revolutionize how we conceptualize research.
Black Children of Incarcerated Parents Speak Truth to Power: Social Revolution
This book centers directly impacted Black children who have lived through parental incarceration. Their stories are told from holistic perspectives incorporating the full range of collateral consequences. Shifting from the Eurocentric and capitalistic viewpoint, they move us beyond negative outcomes to a positive prism by providing insider perspective, strategy, advice, and compelling experiences. We center Black children of incarcerated parents’ (BCOIP’s) rich narratives to show how they are conscious thinkers with perspectives that can help reimagine all Black children’s lives and futures.
The Prison Alphabet: An Educational Coloring Book for Children of Incarcerated Parents
The Prison Alphabet allows each letter of the alphabet to serve as a topic of discussion. By using the letters of the alphabet, this book is a child-friendly approach to helping young children begin to understand what is going on behind bars with their parent or family member
In the research presented here, we use Scott’s (1991) “habits of surviving” and additional stress-related perspectives to inform the facets of strain experienced by Black women. In particular, we analyzed in-depth interviews from Black women who were caregivers to children of incarcerated parents. Caregivers encounter significant life changes as a result of the incarceration event, the persisting challenges, increasing ambiguity, and burgeoning obligations. The research demonstrates that the caregivers adapted to the compounding stress related to incarceration and caregiving by exercising a survival process that required the women to make sacrifices with little regard to their own psychological and physical health.
"I know the power of education... that it can't be taken from you." By bringing her college students into prison for class, Howard University's Dr. Muhammad is changing the stigma associated with life behind bars and providing the gift of education to students and those incarcerated alike.
Does the Apple Fall Far From Prison? is a conversation about the stigmas placed on the children of incarcerated parents and how they are triumphant despite the social and political odds.
Dr. Bahiyyah Muhammad joins Nick Cannon and talks criminology + definition, police funding, white supremacy, and more.
Dr. Bahiyyah M. Muhammad Talks Social Justice Week At Howard University
This companion program contains excerpts from a candid panel discussion held after the local screening of THE BODY POLITIC film led by Howard Univ. Dr. Bahiyyah Muhammad, featuring Baltimore Mayor, Brandon Scott, Errikah Bridgeford of the Baltimore Peace Movement and Jennifer Porter, Director of DC's Office of Victims Services and Justice Grants as they discuss various themes from the program.
