Prison Education Research Articles

Prison Education in Brazil: State-of-the-Knowledge

This work presents an overview of recent scientific production on prison education in Brazil. Thereunto, a survey was carried out in the CAPES theses and dissertations catalog, achieving 15 works published in 2019 and 2020. Initially, the main elements of each work (justification, methodology, theoretical references, and results) were analyzed, from which was possible identify convergences and divergences, further most recurrent issues in discussions. Thereby, it was possible identify that analyzed research focused on characterization of prison education in Brazil and its conditions, on experience reports and faced challenges, and on pointing paths to overcome these challenges. The study concludes that in general analyzed research point to limitations that pedagogy in prison system imposes, also identified in non-prison contexts, and proposes a reflection on the relation between the teaching organization system and these limitations.

Środki poprawczo-wychowawcze stosowane wobec małoletnich więźniów w Królestwie Polskim (do 1867 r.)

Introduction: During the autonomous period of the Kingdom of Poland, seven-year-old children were already under criminal responsibility. Tragic consequence of juvenile delinquency was imprisonment, during which minors served the sentence with demoralized adult prisoners. Corrective and educational measures were to counteract this phenomenon. Research Aim: The aim of the article is to present corrective and educational measures in the light of legal solutions for juvenile prisoners in the autonomous period of the Kingdom of Poland. Institutional sources in the form of penal code, regulations of the Administrative Council, regulations of the Government Commission for Internal and Clergy Affairs and prison regulations relating to juvenile offenders and juvenile prisoners were analyzed. Evidence-based Facts: In the history of rehabilitation pedagogy, there is no synthetic study on teaching minors in prisons during the autonomous period of the Kingdom of Poland. The few research results focusing on the state of prison education at that time, only marginally refer to the education of children in prisons. These issues were dealt with by both nineteenth-century social activists and researchers in the interwar period. In the post-war period, we can also find it incidentally in monographs devoted to the rehabilitation of minors. Summary: Despite the fact that the main goal of the partition policy towards children was Russification, the efforts made in prisons, thanks to the social commitment of penitentiaries, contributed to their moral improvement.

“We're Here! We're Queer! Fuck the Banks!”

Abstract Literalizing the metaphor of José Esteban Muñoz's famous statement, “Queerness is not yet here. . . . The here and now is a prison house,” this essay argues that the process of affectively reorienting space and minds toward abolition is a queer act. It posits that abolition and queerness overlap in their refusal to maintain faith in institutions to effect change, specifically through legal reforms that redouble the status quo while shunning broader visions of liberation. Queer abolitionist affects reorient space toward decolonial futures by challenging normative paradigms of power and its critique. In messy and imperfect ways, a queer abolitionist analysis understands love and collectivity more capaciously beyond the nuclear family unit to social relations not of domination but of transformation. By exploring the affective dimensions of queer abolition, this essay takes up the spatial and symbolic relationship between the Pride parade and the prison industrial complex. It brings together an analysis of public protest against the colonial-carceral state and prison education, specifically the Humanities Behind Bars program, in order to engage how queer affects strengthen and sustain the relationships so vital to abolitionist world making.

Prison Education: Beyond Review and Evaluation

Much is made of the potential of prison education to impart knowledge and skills and transform life chances. Prison education is tasked with delivering qualifications and effecting recidivism. In assessing current arrangements for the delivery of prison education and reviews and evaluations of its impact on recidivism in England and Wales, this article argues that prison education should be an inclusive activity. Specifically, prison education should focus less on individual development and more on whole class ‘domains,’ in particular, knowledge of (re)integration. Research, policy, and practice on civic/citizenship education provide models in this regard.

Lessons on Pedagogy in the Carceral System and Teacher Education

Background/Context: Prison settings present some of the deepest democratic contradictions in the United States. Purpose/Objective: In this study, we investigate how and what teacher education programs can learn from and support teaching practices in prison settings and pre-K–12 contexts. Population/Participants: This study draws from interview data collected from two experienced directors of prison education programs in the United States. Research Design: This study employs in-depth qualitative interviews. Data Collection: Participants were asked questions related to ideals and mindsets they have observed as most effective for teachers to adopt when working in prison settings. Findings/Results: Analytic induction of interviews reveals both similarities and differences between “free world” and prison educational settings. Such findings provide nuanced understandings of the types of knowledge, understanding, and skills teacher education programs might support in prison settings as well as teaching experiences within prison settings from which teacher educators could learn. Conclusions/Recommendations: Teachers in prison settings tend to have rich content knowledge but not robust pedagogical knowledge and skill. Teacher education programs have a chance to not only support teachers in prison education as they build pedagogical knowledge and skills but also be front and center in the fight to dismantle an unjust carceral system.

"Hold onto your snowboots in Ithaca today, baby!"

"Hold onto your snowboots in Ithaca today, baby!" Alex Chertok (bio) Last night Dad emailed me my city's next-day forecast.I wake early to the skullcap of snow he's knit the lamppost.He's rubbed our sun raw with steel wool cloudand placed the back of his handagainst my windshield veined and tendinous with frost. "You'll get 2 inches at least!" he wrote, meteorologistwho can see every city's tempestcoming, their weather's every dark mood, snow- melt and moonset, can copy and pastemy zip code's every wind gustthrough every Lexapro'd wind chime excepthis own. His radar looks only out. Notin, where his own winter is long and most- ly downhill. Black ice. Snowbanks. A bockety, bald-tired past. [End Page 154] Alex Chertok Alex Chertok has poems published in The Kenyon Review Online, The Missouri Review, The Massachusetts Review, The Cincinnati Review, Copper Nickel, and Best New Poets 2016, among others, and essays on his prison teaching published in Ploughshares and forthcoming from Alaska Quarterly Review. He was runner-up in the North American Review's 2019, and finalist in the 2021 James Hearst Poetry Prize, as well as finalists in the 2020 Third Coast Poetry Contest and 2021 Tupelo Quarterly Poetry Open Prize. He currently teaches through the Cornell Prison Education Program. Copyright © 2022 Pleiades and Pleiades Press

Not just another brick in the wall? Protecting prisoners' right to education

Prison education can play a crucial role in prisoners' rehabilitation yet despite prisoners possessing a right to education there are barriers to realising the right to education in practice. This article reviews the barriers to realising the right to education, discusses the legal framework underpinning the right and considers possible ways of enhancing access to education. It is argued that implementation of the right to education should be strengthened and further investment made in education, in view of its benefits to prisoners, prison regimes and to the wider society and to the legitimacy of prison regimes at a time of instability.

The Failure of Ganhua Education: Revisiting Relational-Cultural Theory in China’s Female Prisons

Ganhua education has been viewed by some scholars as holding a critical position in the correctional system of the People’s Republic of China (PRC), for achieving its primary target of imprisonment: rehabilitation. This article aims to redress this argument. Drawing on interviews undertaken with 30 female parolees/ex-prisoners and 10 prison officers, this article argues that the Ganhua education in prison, which is strongly imprinted with the key concept of Relational-Cultural Theory (RCT) that “connection promotes growth,” is ineffective and is unable to empower women to grow, change, and consequently open to rehabilitation at selected female prisons. This article suggests that the RCT is theoretically problematic in producing a “new person,” for the reason of its unawareness of contextualized culture, values, and situations in prison.

Critical Perspectives on UK Prisons

This special issue of The Prison Journal features the scholarship of faculty based at, or associated with. the Institute for Research in Criminology, Community, Education and Social Justice at De Montfort University (DMU), Leicester, UK. Three articles offer critical perspectives on women's prisons, the role of coercive control in the lives of women offenders who are victimized by domestic abuse, and the issue of ethical research practice with imprisoned women. The remaining three contributions include an assessment of prison education in UK prisons, an overview of a hope-inspired UK prison arts program, and the results of a public attitudes survey regarding access to and use of digital technologiesby incarcerated individuals in the UK.

Effects of Prison Overcrowding On the Rehabilitation of Inmates in Liberia: A Study of Monrovia Central Prison

This research thesis aimed at investigating effects of prison overcrowding on the rehabilitation of inmates in Monrovia Central Prison, Liberia. This research study aimed at achieving the following objectives to identify the effectiveness of inmates incarceration on behavior change in Monrovia Central Prison, to examine how prison overcrowding affects the self -sustainability of inmates in Monrovia Central Prison to determine the relevance of vocational education for inmates in Monrovia Central Prison and to establish the relationship between prison overcrowding and vocational education for inmates in Monrovia Central Prison, Liberia. Key informant interview guide was designed and administered to key informants to capture qualitative information. Data from questionnaire were edited and coded then entered in a computer and Statistical Package for Social Scientists (SPSS) program was used to analyze it. The percentage number of respondents according to variables such as; sex, age, objectives and so on were computed and presented using tables. Prison overcrowding and its effects on the rehabilitation of inmates was established using Pearson Linear Correlations Coefficient Statistical Method. Findings revealed that the effectiveness of inmates’ incarceration on behavior change in Monrovia Central Prison has the overall mean or had a value of 2.582 and standard deviation of 66.3%. This implies that inmates are likely to change their behaviors after all they have been jailed and released later on. Findings revealed that the Prison overcrowding affects the self-sustainability of inmates in Monrovia Central Prison had a mean rated to 2.713 and standard deviation of 0.795 estimated to 79.5%. The researcher concluded that there is a need to explore the Effectiveness of inmates incarceration on behavior change in Monrovia Central Prison.. The second objective was to investigate the extent to which prison overcrowding affects the self-sustainability of inmates in Monrovia Central Prison in Liberia. The study results based on a Pearson’s Correlation revealed that there is a positive and weak relationship between prison overcrowding and rehabilitation programs at Monrovia Central Prison, Liberia The researcher recommended that the government of Liberia should protect prisoners’ physical and mental health. That is to say: the time prisoners spend out of their cells may be increased, with maximum possible time spent in the open air

Organic Intellectuals in the Prison: Reports from the Flying University on Philosophy as Public Practice

The Flying University, a prison education and reentry program that brings university students inside the prison for mutual and collaborative study, convenes with the assumed understanding that incarcerated peoples bear rich critical perspectives on the state of our communities as well as a philosophical potential to muster the resources necessary to heal communities in the wake of historical violence and transgenerational trauma. Rather than bringing incarcerated students into the purview of academic philosophy, the Flying University reverses these roles by recognizing that incarcerated peoples engage in daily philosophical scrutiny about a whole range of topics that traditional academic philosophy too often fails to comprehend with any depth. The Flying University enacts precollege philosophy as public practice by facilitating semester-long seminars that bring professional philosophers and university students into the prison—not so they can teach prisoners but listen to them. The guiding critical assumption of this practice follows Antonio Gramsci’s argument that what distinguishes “philosophers” from their opposite has less to do with intellectual activity and perspective and more to do with social status and credentials. A genuinely restorative philosophical praxis must solicit, within our community dialogues, the stories and voices of our incarcerated neighbors as “organic intellectuals.”

Rights Restoration Education in Ohio Jails and Prisons

Rights Restoration Education in Ohio Jails and Prisons

Are Schools in Prison Worth It? The Effects of and Economic Returns to Prison Education

Are Schools in Prison Worth It? The Effects of and Economic Returns to Prison Education

4 Contested Space: Higher Education Programming in Prisons

Abstract: While academic freedom is considered a birthright in higher education, the current hysteria surrounding teaching critical race theory in K–12 schools and at universities demonstrates an ongoing resistance to teaching theories that deconstruct and challenge white dominant norms. In prison education spaces, where censorship is common, tailoring education to the needs of those in power in prisons is wrought with ethical grievances. As federal funding for incarcerated students increases, how should higher education institutions navigate topics such as race and racism, when this content is challenged by prison officials? This article explores conceptually the role that higher education programming should have in prison spaces and discusses what is at stake when censorship of race and racism are not actively challenged. A framework is employed, through Ladson-Billings work, that names the ways in which an accrued educational debt is owed to incarcerated students of color that can begin to be repaid through student-centered higher education in prison programming. Additionally, the response of a college in prison organization when faced with prison censorship is highlighted as a path forward to engaging and responding to a growing anti-CRT movement, intended to obscure history and the inequity that people of color face in the United States. Without interrogating the role of college in prison programs, universities without careful consideration of how to address these racialized censorship issues can become a part of the repressive institution that is our current carceral state.

Management of Education Services in Prisons: A Case Study

In this paper we assess the management of education services in Uganda prisons, taking a case study of Luzira Upper Prison. Specifically, this study established the kind of education services provided to inmates in Luzira Upper prison, as well as sought to establish the relationship between jail term and the type of education services offered to inmates in Luzira Upper prison. The study adopted both qualitative and quantitative approaches to gather the necessary data. With a single case study design. A questionnaire and an interview guide were used to collect data from inmates accessing education services, teachers, Prison Warders and senior prison staff purposively selected who composed the sample. (n=104) The study findings pointed to Vocational trainings, basic education in form of general subjects; creative art teaching lessons to the inmates among others. To establish whether jail term had a relationship with type of education service in Luzira Upper Prisons a correlation was computed, examined and interpreted using the Chi-Square Test. The results also pointed to a positive relationship between jail term and type of education program undertaken at Luzira Upper Prison by the inmates as indicated by (p = 0.565). This relationship is significant since the significance of 0.565 is discovered to be greater than 0.05. The study concluded that management of prison education services has a well-established curriculum with both vocational and academic courses being offered, the policy of voluntary participation to education is a major shortcoming leading to recidivism. We concluded that government needs to effectively increase finances to mitigate shortages arising from the education provision to inmates, strategically plan an expansion of the curricula to include skills targeting psycho social aspect in a restricted environment to allow complete rehabilitation after the inmate tenure. The study recommended that ministry of education and sports should not only make inmate education compulsory to all inmates but also take the leading role in adopting prison schools in on the list of community public schools in Uganda.

Hospitality education in New Zealand prisons

Hospitality education in New Zealand prisons

“Education as the practice of freedom?” – prison education and the pandemic

ABSTRACT Throughout the COVID-19 pandemic there has been a corner of society where the spotlight has not fallen – the black hole of prisons, confining predominantly poor, minoritised and often younger adults. Globally, during the pandemic, people detained in prison have been locked away in solitary, or near solitary, confinement for up to 23-hours a day. In the UK, this meant choosing between fresh air, exercise or a phone call to loved ones each day. There has been little mention of education. Those in custody endured over a year locked in a cell without access to basic education let alone Higher Education (HE). In examining the state’s responsibility to provide “education for all”, we demonstrate, through our collective participation in the Inside-Out Prison Exchange Programme, the value and importance of prison education beyond the current focus on risk, responsibility and recidivism. We evidence the transformative and humanising potential of HE in prison through three key elements – the space and learning environment; the role of voice, recognition and agency; and the power of disruptive and transgressive teaching practice. We shine a light on education in prison during the COVID-19 pandemic. The impacts of COVID-19 expose new and deeper forms of structural disadvantage that shape the educational experiences and journeys of people in custody. We consider how we can expedite “education as the practice of freedom” for those who are incarcerated during and beyond the pandemic. We conclude by reimagining HE in UK prisons, reflecting upon alternative, more positive, approaches to prison education.

Challenges facing a Māori prison education leader

Māori are severely over-represented in the prison population of Aotearoa New Zealand, making up over half of all prisoners, despite being only about 15% of the national population. These Māori statistics are well-known, and support racist perceptions of Māori in general. There is substantial literature on Māori imprisonment in Criminology and related fields, but it mostly focuses on ‘fixing’ the prisoner. Prison education is a neglected topic in extant educational research. Little research exists on the experiences of those who work in prisons, and little or none about the experiences of Māori prison educators. Prison education focuses on changing behaviours that lead to offending and helping prisoners to gain work and life skills. But security concerns and managing the prison population take precedence and restrict the availability and priority given to education. The recent Hōkai Rangi strategy has generated enthusiasm, but has yet to translate into positive results.

Prison Education, as Solution to the Failures of Other Institutions

Motivation - The period of manifestation of the COVID-19 pandemic, brought to the fore the need for change, as the only social constant perceived as a necessity in all existential dimensions. Pre-existing social needs and problems stood out and social inequalities sharpened, including those mediated by the educational act. The educational field attracts increased attention, because the directions of action that will be established will generate "our future world" or "future individual worlds", especially in the penitentiary environment that accounts for the failure of institutions that acted before the crime and imprisonment. Answer to a problem - Education and re-education in the penitentiary environment can contribute to increasing the quality of life in the community, not only by separating those who have committed crimes from other members of society, but also by contributing to the destructuring of undesirable social behavior and creating changes. Reference works - The issue of penitentiary education (formal, informal, non-formal) is presented in the reference regulations for the field of social reintegration Research methods - secondary data analysis, documentary analysis, direct/participatory observation Conclusions - The public perception of penitentiaries is a negative one that generates, rather, fears and disapproval. However, a careful analysis of the causal chain up to the time of incarceration, of the recovery assistance interventions in detention and of the concrete modalities of monitoring and assistance in order to reintegrate post-enforcement, could constitute landmarks for the elaboration of multidimensional strategies, starting with the simple citizen, up to the state level. Basic theoretical work - Ilie et al (2020, pp. 22-78)

“Moving the Rubble”: Reflection, Conscientization, and Transformative Learning With Men Incarcerated for Organized Crime in Mexico

While many scholars have examined transformative learning in different prison education programs, the field has only recently reached Latin America. This article presents a participatory action research project which has been operating in a prison for men accused of organized crime in Jalisco, Mexico, since 2018. The analysis is based on testimonies related to personal and collective transformation in a context of multifaceted oppression. It also explores the blurry lines between reflection, conscientization, and transformation, inviting us to consider how transformative education relates to social stigma and freedom.