The subject was nothing less than the future of the planet. Inside a fortress of high walls, razor wire and guard towers, two teams were debating whether the United States should impose a tax on greenhouse gas emissions. "Resolved," announced the first debater, James Keown. "Global climate change fueled by the unchecked emissions of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere is wreaking havoc on our planet," he said. "We can do better. We must do better." As corrections officers watched closely, Keown and four other prisoners began the revival of the once-legendary debating society at the state prison known as MCI-Norfolk. Sharing the stage were five opponents from the Boston College debate team. Through the windows of the old, high-ceilinged auditorium, light streamed onto the stage. In the house were a couple hundred inmates — and the ghosts of a prison past. "We needed to bring back the Norfolk Debating Society," Keown said. "It’s been 53 years — 53 years [is] way too long." Inmates come and inmates go, though the only way Keown and many other “lifers” will ever leave Norfolk is in a box. But the debate team has endured as legend. Indeed the belief that prisoners can be rehabilitated through education and debate was the foundation on which the Norfolk prison rose in the 1930s. And, says inmate Alexander Phillips, it still offers transformation. "It’s the ability to highlight our potential that we shouldn’t just be thrown away," Phillips said. "It’s amazing. Malcolm X was here. He was a debate member. Our record is, like, 144-8." In his autobiography, Malcolm X called Norfolk "the most enlightened form of prison I have ever heard of." He and his fellow debaters achieved their record against teams visiting from the likes of Harvard, Yale, Princeton, West Point, McGill and even the acclaimed Oxford University, whose undefeated 1959 string across America ended in Norfolk.

"It’s the ability to highlight our potential that we shouldn’t just be thrown away." inmate Alexander Phillips

Now for its first debate against an outside team in half a century, Norfolk had invited Boston College’s Fulton Debating Society. The BC students -- none of whom had ever been to prison before -- had recently beat Notre Dame in New York, and they had scored a win at West Point too. But this was an away game like no other. Norfolk always plays at home. So the visitors had to pull their pockets out on their way in and submit to being searched, scanned and cleared before going through the mantrap and the clanging metal doors that announce you’re inside and under institutional control, which is the first priority of prisons. Norfolk has 1,440 inmates. Four members of its debate team are lifers, three of them convicted of murders in the first degree. So for Ronald Leftwich, for instance, the world of possibility excludes parole, but includes debate. "It’s an opportunity for us not to only bring back the Norfolk debating team," he said, "but it’s an opportunity for us to show the world that we’re more than what our prison sentences say we are." Under the rules for this debate, the first speaker for Norfolk -- which was the “pro" team -- was followed by Kelvin Lin, a speaker for Boston College, the "con" team. “While we agree with our opponents that global warming is a serious problem, we strongly disagree that the carbon tax is a solution," Lin said. "Our first major point against a carbon tax is that it will not promote the development of clean energy technologies." Like most of the BC debaters, Lin stuck to the podium and delivered his speech by reading it, sometimes too quickly. In contrast, most of the Norfolk team spoke without notes, untethered to the podium, and freed from the daily regimentation of prison life.

"It’s an opportunity for us to show the world that we’re more than what our prison sentences say we are." inmate Ronald Leftwich