A group of young women gather to discuss a classic philosophy text, books open and pens at the ready. They ponder the words of an ancient thinker, their professor challenging them toward deeper understanding.

It could be a scene from an all-female college anywhere in the country, with one important twist: The students are mostly convicted criminals, and the campus is the New Hampshire State Prison for Women.

“Plato’s Republic: An Introduction to Western Philosophy,” brought together eight inmates and three Saint Anselm College students for the past three months to study under Edward McGushin, assistant professor of philosophy at Saint Anselm.

Funded through a grant from the New Hampshire Humanities Council, the class served the dual purpose of education and selfimprovement for a population hungry for both, McGushin said.

“‘The Republic’ is written in a style very accessible to readers of today. It gives the inmates something to keep their minds alive,” McGushin said.

“The Republic,” Plato’s seminal work from 360 B.C., includes one famous story in which prisoners interpret their world based solely on the shadows cast by flames on the walls of a cave.

“One of the main themes of ‘The Republic’ is prison,” McGushin said. “I wanted to let the inmates know there is a relationship between philosophy and prison. Philosophers have done time.”

Themes covered in “The Republic” resonate deeply with the inmates taking the class. Some women drew straight lines from the book to the experiences that led them to prison.

“Plato talks about using your will to control your appetite, and what can happen if you don’t. I let my appetite overwhelm me, and look where it got me,” said inmate Kelli Lamontagne, 29, of Laconia, who is currently serving time for parole violation. She had previously been imprisoned for forgery and larceny convictions.

Lamontagne said she had never been an enthusiastic reader before entering the philosophy class in prison. A 1996 graduate of Laconia High School and a U.S. Army veteran, Lamontagne said she entered the class after reading some questions posed on a sign-up sheet in the prison.

“Some of the questions on the sign-up sheet asked things like, ‘Why do you make the choices you make?’ I’d love to think about why I’ve made the choices I made in life,” Lamontagne said in an interview before the class.

The questions on the sign-up sheet were written by Elaine Rizzo, a criminal justice professor and co-director of the college’s Consortium of Justice and Society. Rizzo, who wrote the program grant, is currently on sabbatical and could not be reached for comment.

Some students said their reading of Plato’s work often led them to deeper understanding of the human thought process.

“Everything that happens in this world comes from a thought,” said Nicole Munger, 19, of Lebanon, currently serving time on drug charges.

Some of the questions McGushin posed to the students prompted them to consider the nature of crime itself. For example, he asked them to weigh whether it is worse to suffer an injustice or to inflict an injustice upon someone else.

In answering this question, inmate Caryn Acevedo referenced the three parts of the soul as noted by Plato. Those include reason, the will and the appetite.

“If you had a healthy soul, you wouldn’t cause an injustice,” said Acevedo, currently serving time for the stabbing death of her boyfriend in May 2005.

“I would rather have a healthy soul and suffer an injustice that have a chaotic soul and commit an injustice,” Acevedo said.

McGushin noted that Socrates, a famed Greek philosopher featured in “The Republic” who was himself put to death, never wrote any works of his own. Socrates’ ideas in “The Republic” are filtered through Plato’s interpretation, McGushin said.

As much as some of the prison inmates said they learned from the book, the Saint Anselm students said the course taught them some lessons that weren’t entirely academic.

“We believe in what this project is trying to do,” said Jessica St. Laurent, a freshman from Blandford, Mass. “We realized there’s no such thing as a ‘typical’ inmate.”

The prison warden also spoke positively of the effect the course has had on participating inmates.

“This is a great opportunity for our population to work with the college, and (the inmates’) confidence has taken an enormous boost through this,” said Warden Richard Gerry.

As a farewell gift to the students, McGushin presented each of them with a personal copy of the “Tao te Ching,” a landmark Chinese philosophy book.

In closing remarks to the class, McGushin offered thoughts on how the relationships of ancient Greek philosophers mirror those of students in that very prison classroom.

“Plato was inspired by Socrates. Plato was a poet and a playwright. He was going to be a celebrity basically, and he gave it up to become a philosopher.

“We’ve spent 12 weeks together having philosophical conversations, and who knows where these ideas will go and what you will make of them,” McGushin said.