WUNRN
The United Nations Special Rapporteur on the Right to Education, Mr.
Vernor Munoz,will dedicate his 2009 Report to the UN Human Rights Council, to:
EDUCATION OF PEOPLE IN PRISONS
Link to
Online Resources for Women in Prison:
PLACING EDUCATION FOR ALL
AT THE HEART OF PRISONS…
Everyone has the right to education.(…)
Education shall be directed to the full
development of the human personality
and to the strengthening of respect for human
rights and fundamental freedoms.
(Universal Declaration of Human Rights”) (art 26)
“Adult learning can shape identity
and give meaning to life. Learning throughout life implies a rethinking of
content to reflect such factors as age, gender equality,
disability, language, culture and
economic disparities.”
(Hamburg Declaration on Adult
Learning, Article 2 - 1997)
“It is essential that approaches to adult
learning be based on people's own heritage, culture, values and prior experiences
and that the diverse ways in which
these approaches are implemented enable and
encourage every
citizen to be actively involved and to have a
voice.”
(Hamburg Declaration on Adult Learning, Article
5 - 1997).
(1) Prison is a defeat for the detainee; it is
also a defeat for societies, which for hundreds of years have been unable to
come up with any solution other than seclusion as a punishment for delinquents.
(2) Under these conditions, expectations for
prison education are expanding along with the growing recognition that the
penitentiary system is only meeting one of its major objectives in at best a
very unequal manner, notably the “reintegration/rehabilitation” of the
delinquent.
(3) Expectations are numerous and varied:
(4) – for some, prison education is
considered to be a concern specific to industrialised nations that have
sufficient human and material resources to add educational programmes to the
services already offered in prison while, according to these protagonists,
developing countries are unable even to offer basic services.
(5)- for others, prison education is a requirement that can
only be met later, when other more urgent problems outside prisons
(development, wars, and famines) and inside prisons (order, security, diet, and
health) will have been tackled.
(6)- for still others, it is absolutely the
tool for reducing recidivism.
(7) – for still others, prison education
is one of a number of good methods for occupying the time of detention as well
as possible and for calming the most nervous prisoners.
(8 ) for still others, it’s about
restarting a failed education; what is necessary is “re-education”.
(9) – And lastly, for others, it is the
occasion to reorganise the life of the detained and his release…
There are still many other good and bad
expectations which become reasons…
(10) For the United Nations (and thus UNESCO),
education (in
prison) is a right that derives from the right to life-long learning for all.
It is not special education, but the continuum of formal education, non-formal
education, informal education of a person momentarily confined in a specific place.
(11) Accordingly, prison education should not
have to wait for other problems to be more or less resolved in order to be
implemented. Education is not an optional and additional activity, but rather
the tool that will allow individuals to understand their history and to equip
themselves with life objectives. This remains equally true in prison.
(12) Governments of countries, whether rich,
poor, in transition, or emerging, must consider prison education as a tool for
the promotion of all people, which will enable them – with a better
understanding of their history – to set socially acceptable personal objectives
in social, family, and professional matters.
(13) The judgment of society having been
pronounced, educators will intervene in a different area altogether, and with
different methods. Their intervention will not serve to extend the judgment. It
is not the penal past, but the individual history that is of interest to the
educator. Prison education is an approach that considers the detained as a
person who needs to be helped to formulate his demand for education. It is work
that is done for people who often have minimal schooling, a largely unhappy
memory of formal education, and who will doubtless see this education, in the
beginning, as an additional constraint. It is not certain that all detainees
will, from the outset, participate in such an approach.
(14) From the perspective of life-long
learning, it is understood that we learn every day by observing, imitating, and
experimenting. Informal education within the family and elsewhere combines with
formal education, of which the school is the principal agent.
(15) When
individuals cannot have access to formal education (because there is no school
where they are or because they are dropouts), informal education is pursued –
for better or worse. The same holds for prison, where it’s not about deciding
whether there will be education or not. In prison, you learn: you learn to
survive, to find a place in the power networks, to take no original initiative
to organise your daily routines. It will
thus be the choice of politicians to decide what subjects will be offered and
developed during the time of detention and by whom they will be offered.
(16) Prison education also deals with the
life-long learning of the penitentiary agents, the prison staff, of detainee
families, of the detainee and specific minorities, as well as their health,
management of conflicts, their citizenship, cultural diversity, and literacy.
(17) It is thus not a simple sum of curricula
for detainees, but a whole group of attitudes and practices that can be
educational within the penitentiary establishment - the attitudes of the staff
vis-à-vis the detained and the detainees amongst themselves.
(18) A.1. The detainees
There are more than ten million detainees in
the world (1) and a small minority of those are women (in 150 countries, they
represent less than 7%). In 30 countries, foreigners constitute 20 to 83 % of
the prison population. The population is de facto multicultural .
(19) In roughly 120 countries, prisons are
over-populated. (source: International Centre for Prison Studies)
The schooling level of detainees is generally
low; many of them are school dropouts or those who have had no access to basic
formal education. Family education has also at times (and for a variety of
reasons) been deficient.
(20) National statistics pertaining to the
prison milieu are generally available with respect to occupation rates,
sentence duration and the sociological make-up of the establishments. On the
other hand, they are generally weak or even non-existent with respect to the
number and frequency of educational activities, their content, their
organisation as well as the human and financial means allocated.
(21) Under such conditions, political
decision-makers and educators in the field are ill equipped for an exchange of
experiences and pedagogical materials.
(22) A.2. Political decision-makers
Numerous industrialised countries have
legislation pertaining to prison education; some inter-governmental authorities
make recommendations on the organisation of prisons (such as the Council of
Europe).
(23) In more and more countries, an evaluation
of educational programmes in prison is under way, and a new less-repressive and
more humanist approach is being developed.
(24) In the poorest countries, prison education
is rarely a priority, no doubt because it is still perceived as an additional
problem (and cost) and not as a tool or an investment for confronting the
period of detention and the eventual release from prison.
(25) In democratic transition countries, the
humanist approach to social problems has not reached prisons, detainees or
penitentiary personnel.
(26) In all
of these cases, international, bi- and multi-lateral cooperation must be
activated and prison education must be integrated into the programmes
pertaining to education for all.
(27)
A.3.The trainers
The status of teachers / trainers is varied:
they come (by choice or by appointment) from Ministries of education or of
Social Affairs; they are also members of non-governmental organisations, union
organisations, churches and sometimes the military. They are more or less
prepared to work in this specific milieu.
(28) The initiative for the organisation of
prison education, even if it is often provided for in the regulations, often
depends on the (good) will of the management of each establishment as well as
the financial and human means allocated.
(29) The motivation underpinning this decision
is linked to the expectations held with respect to prison education: activities
to keep people occupied, less aggressive and guaranteeing peace inside the
walls, promotion of group activities, respect for the request of education,
recognition of a right, an occasion to supply professional training or to
discover talents, development of non-formal education, etc.
(30)
A.4. Penitentiary personnel
Every action of penitentiary personnel could
take on an educational dimension, -
whether it be in relation to the detainees in the organisation of concrete
daily life of the prison, by fostering access to educational and social
activities, or by simply witnessing daily life. The professional associations
of the agents could serve as important actors of the life-long education of the
agents … and the detainees…even if their interests differ.
(31) National experiments show that the
development of the work of the agents can become a reality when the educational
value of their work is recognised; they can be convinced of the utility of
educational activities for the detainees and to ensure that their accessibility
is thus guaranteed. Increased appreciation for and ongoing training of the
agents (to the socio-cultural reality, diversity, etc.) must be maintained.
(32) Every professional gesture has an
educational impact: respect for the individual, respect for rights, etc.
Education is not the juxtaposition of sequences of education, but rather
learning linked to awareness of the existence of others in the daily sphere and
in cultural, sporting, social, family and prison activities.
B. 1.
An issue involving the intrinsic responsibility of the State
(34) The organisation of prison education is
the responsibility of the State which must ensure the continuum and consistency
of the handling of delinquency: to prevent it and then, in the event of
failure, to render justice, organise the penalty, the modalities of the latter,
the prison stay and eventual release.
(35) The possible privatisation of prisons and/or of prison education
calls out to those for whom education (of the detainee), defined as life-long
learning including not only training and informal activities but also
curricula, must remain under the control of the State (organisation, content,
appointment of trained personnel, etc.). Prison education, unlike other kinds,
may not be limited to a transmission or reproduction of a set piece of
knowledge.
(36) Data from experiments pertaining to the
joint continuing education of the detainees, their families and penitentiary
personnel must be assembled.
(37)
B. 2. An international issue
It is well known that in certain prisons, there
are sometimes a great number of foreigners, a fact that is not without
influence on social relations and forced relations on the inside. Life-long
learning must be able to integrate cultural diversity, all the while presenting
the qualities of the “host” society.
(38) Trainers should be able to have the possibility of exchanging
educational materials and training leaders should stress these exchanges. There
are not enough bi-lateral and multi-lateral agreements accessible to
penitentiary agents, nor are they well enough known, or specific enough.
(39) (Cultural) diversity is a fact in prison;
prison is a multi-cultural environment; this diversity thus presents an
opportunity for education, for in addition to courses, there is this imposed
co-existence. Prison may not be an ideal place for life, but it may nonetheless
be a place of positive learning about differences.
(40)
B. 3. A daily issue
Prison also teaches unlearning: learning how to
live without any concern about a budget, without having to organize time and
space, without having to organize meals or moments throughout the day. One
learns to lose one’s privacy, not to think about anything, to work for a salary
that isn’t one; one learns to live without emotional attachments.
(41) Thus, one unlearns a certain number of
attitudes and initiatives that are nonetheless necessary to daily life in the
outside world.
(42) At the same time, one learns, through the
“peer education” of a certain number of things that completely escape the
control of prison authorities and trainers; we know also that these
apprenticeships are not always the best for social re-integration.
(43) Therefore, there is no escaping the
central question: what sort of education are the authorities going to set up to
counter-balance the negative apprenticeships learned in prison, in order to
give a first or second chance to detainees?
(44)
B. 4. An integrated cultural issue
Libraries should contain appropriate materials
and be places of learning, ICT included. They must be transformed to become
places that are more easily and regularly accessible. They will become informal
meeting places for detainees and could sponsor information sessions on health,
work, parenting, work attitudes, preparation for release, and non-violent
conflict management; they could also serve as a space for family visits,
especially those where children are present. There is a whole pedagogy of the
library to be developed.
(45) A “multiplication” of such places should
be envisioned. Professional librarian associations should be enlisted. Prison
libraries must not simply be the recipients of the refuse of other public
libraries as certain books – just like certain reading practices – can serve to
turn people off from reading and the pleasure of learning.
(46)
B. 5. A context that fosters the demand
for education
It is well known that informal education exists
in prison; the learning experiences are numerous and they are not all socially
positive. Another element should be looked into: where it exists, the
television plays an important role: escape, dreaming, the search for heroes,
role models, etc. (47) Its function must
be investigated as well as the manner in which detainees learn to watch it. In
a place with no link to real life, the identification with heroes, who also
have no link to daily life, may have important consequences in terms of
behaviour.
(48) Learning to watch television and start to
decode prevailing culture means imbuing leisure with a permanent educational
role.
(49) Receiving education is only a part of the
process. Life-long learning must also allow the detainee to formulate a demand
for education, whether it be professional or not, or integrated into a life
project. Thus it should not just be the Ministry of education that is involved,
but all of the ministries. Inter-ministerial cooperation should be implemented
to organize the educational offering and foster demand.
(50)
B. 6. An issue that integrates families
Family visits must be given an educational
character; too often family visits take place in educationally non-significant
spaces (or spaces that are overly constrained). These visits could become
moments of education between members of the same family, and take place in
spaces like libraries. Parents and children could share what they’ve learned.
(51) Care should be given to ensure that during
visits, despite the prison context, the incarcerated parent may, to the extent
possible, continue to play his or her educational role. This dimension must not
be ignored in the construction of new prisons.
(52) C.1. An evaluation of formal and informal
learning as well as experience must be completed upon entry and must lead to
the establishment of an educational project which will not be defined as a
school project, but rather one that will integrate all of the socio-educational
activities to be developed in prison.
(53) This skills assessment should be global
and stress innate aptitudes or years of experience. The exercise should be
repeated during the detention, as we know that the milieu can rapidly exert a
strong and sometimes lasting influence on behaviour, reflexes and each person’s
general outlook.
(54) C.2.
The educational dossier must remain separate from the penal dossier. It
should be managed solely by the educators. The educators should hold a specific
status that doesn’t make them part of the prison personnel nor of that of the
justice system. (55) The educational
dossier must remain a work tool for both parties (educator/trainer and the
detainee) with an eye to a motivating and lasting re-integration.
(56) C.3.
Sentence reductions applicable to detainees who work must be able to be
applied as well to detainees who study. Certain countries view studying as a
professional activity. This question is vast: education must not be viewed by
detainees as merely an instrument for obtaining a sentence reduction, and
non-formal education (such as theatre or individual expression) must also be
considered as an educational activity in the fullest sense of the term.
(57) Decisions on sentence reductions must not
be taken in the name of the educators, whose role must not be confused with
that of someone taking part in an exclusively judicial decision.
(58) Prison education is not viewed as
re-education but rather as a moment of life-long learning. It concerns all
aspects of life. Education (in prison) recognises the individual in his
entirety and not just the label of detainee or delinquent. It does not repeat
the court’s judgment.
(59) D.1.1.
Basic education and literacy
Numerous detainees do not have even the basic
tools (a basic education, literacy). Functional literacy programmes must be set
up from the perspective of providing literacy that gives meaning to the life of
the individual. More than learning to read and write, the approach must allow
detainees – following the philosophy of Paulo Freire – to attribute meaning to
their learning: reading, writing, and arithmetic is a right which must be
evoked during the United Nations’ Literacy Decade and within the context of the
LIFE programme (Literacy Initiative for Empowerment) of the international
community.
(60) D.1.2. Non-formal education
Non-formal education is often a first step
towards rediscovering the act of learning, and even the pleasure of learning.
This sort of pedagogy is not always considered as an integral part of
education. Non-formal education programmes should be recognized as educational
activities. This happens through the training of leaders / educators accredited
and with on-the-job training in feelings or emotions. (61) Non-formal
educational activities, calling more on the feelings and life experience of the
individual, must be able to be organised in places where the presence of the
agents is as discreet as possible. (62) Ongoing training of leader/educators of
non-formal education must be stressed and recognised in prison as well as outside
of it. (63) Non-formal educational activities also present possibilities for
contact with the outside world (families, activist friends, etc.) through the
presentation of the pieces produced: theatre, painting, poetry, published
newspapers, etc. (64) Awareness must be
raised amongst a broad spectrum of political decision-makers of the educational
character (and sometimes the first stage) of non-formal education sessions.
(65) Most importantly, what is experienced during non-formal education sessions
must benefit from the highest levels of discretion and professional secrecy for
the actors.
(66) D.1.3.
Vocational training
Often presented as an essential component
(because most often perceived as immediately urgent?), vocational training must
allow detainees to discover not just the rigours of training, but also of work,
the labour market and the organisation of work. Learning a job is not
sufficient. During the detention, detainees gain work experience but this is
often repetitive, poorly paid and providing little qualification. In comparison
to vocational training, it should be a requirement of all prison work
(“offered” through sub-contracting) that it include a training dimension. (67)
Private companies offering the work should be obliged to provide training for
all sub-contracted work. Outside training (closest to the reality of the
working world) must be sought. Vocational training is rare in prison. There is
nothing more than a few workshops for a few hundred detainees and some kinds of
training are not offered for obvious security reasons.
(68) Vocational training should not be of the
traditional sort (especially for women) and union organizations should be
called on to research the issue.
(69) D.1.4.
Skills validation
Skills validation is essential. This approach
must be considered in its entirety, namely, as a pedagogical process and not
simply as a process of bureaucratic restoring of order.
(70) Appreciating experience and the person
holding it (at this moment of his or her existence) is certainly not the norm
in the prison environment. The process of recognition can only start when a
parallel kind of work is undertaken with the person. Skills validation must go
hand in hand with relearning attitudes and habits as prison also teaches
people to do nothing. Skills validation is appreciating the demand for
education. In this work, trainers still have an important role to play: their
job is to structure the student’s pedagogical process and not operate as a
bureaucrat putting together a technical dossier.
(71) D.
2. Diversity and citizenship education
Cultural diversity is a fact in prison. It must
be integrated and included in the educational approach.
The right to vote for detainees is not extended
to all. The reality varies from country to country; certain prisoners retain
their right to vote; in other countries, the condemned also; in still others,
it is lost – the right or the fact – upon entry into prison. (72) It is not
enough to guarantee this right; it should be the occasion for citizenship
education: understanding political parties, the delegation of power, democracy,
and politics. In this context, diversity education finds its true niche.
(73)- The often quantitatively significant
presence of foreign detainees makes diversity work essential. Migrants are
often in prison because of their illegal situation. Prison is the opposite of
what they were seeking.
(74) Education must thus include work on
cultures of origin, work and motivations, the failure of the adventure and
adaptation to an eventual installation in the country. If deportation is the
penalty, then an effort should be made to work with international cooperation
organisations in order to best prepare for this return.
(75) The co-existence
of numerous nationalities in a restricted (“neutral”) territory could become
the positive content of education rather than an additional problem if all of
the actors are convinced of it.
(76) D.
3. Health education
Detainees often suffer from poor health. Some
suffer from mental illness. These illnesses exist prior to incarceration but
sometimes, it is the latter that induces them or aggravates them. A lack of
hygiene, the insalubrity of some buildings (tuberculosis), over-population,
loss of bearings, isolation, loss of privacy, collective use of syringes,
unprotected sexual relations –all of these are causes of illnesses brought on
by imprisonment. Behavioural problems, feelings of anxiety or of revolt are
other illnesses occasioned by a prison stay.
(77) Too few penitentiary systems offer
systematic information on how to take care of one’s health. Information
sessions on hygiene, STDs, unsupervised use of medications (tranquillisers)
should be common but they are of insufficient number. The aim of these sessions
should be to build a body of knowledge and experience for detainees to be
shared amongst themselves and with their families.
(78) A policy of prevention will be of interest
to the community of detainees but also to their families and networks.
(79) D. 4.
Cultural education
Libraries could play an essential role in the
organisation of continuing education in prison, not just as a service for the
distribution of books and advice but by becoming places of culture. The
development of educational environments is one of the principal objectives,
there to analyse passive leisure activities.
(80) Prison libraries must not receive rejects
from other libraries. Some books – like certain reading practices – alienate
the reader from reading.
The trick is to lead people to the discovery
that education is not an obligation or a requirement, but rather a pleasure.
(This is very far from the view held by most detainees with respect to school.)
(81) D. 5.
Education and lifelong learning
D.5.1.
Training of trainers
Trainers in prison have a very different
baggage, including within the same prison. Depending on whether they are
volunteers, teachers assigned by the national Ministry of Education, religious
zealots, even military personnel, their training – that is to say, their
perception of their work or “mission” –
varies. The motivation of the contributors should be studied, the minimum
indispensable baggage for working in prison (technical and cultural, depending
on the diversity and the specificity of the public encountered). (82) A study
should be done of the status of the detainee who is more educated than others,
voluntarily giving training or organising and systematising information. How
might this experience be recognised upon release from prison?
(83) The presence of teachers inside prison is
a gauge of democracy. The conditions of their access and autonomy in their
prison work should be studied. What links exist with formal education, school
outside the wall? Their professional status must be clarified: mode of
assignment, turnover, or a specific status?
(84) The risks of the privatisation of prison
education represent a threat to the presence of teachers in prison. It must be
proven that their presence is about more than distributing knowledge, but
rather about the encounter of two personalities who are working at gaining
mutual recognition.
(85)
D.5.2. Training of penitentiary agents
The general level of training of the
penitentiary agents must be closely examined. Certainly, the reality differs
from country to country, even from prison to prison. Minimal financing for the
function often prevents the hiring of qualified personnel. Training of agents
also concerns the training of detainees. The training needs of these two categories
should not be presented as antagonistic or competing; rather it should be
understood that the continuous training of one fosters the continuous training
of the other.
(86) Certain criteria should be developed,
regardless of the countries, for the training of agents. International
cooperation in the prison education sector should consider having agents
participate in exchange programmes.
(87)
5.3. The potential role of detainees and former detainees
A study should be done of the ways in which
former detainees might cooperate in educational activities. This should not
only include formal training, but also a potential contribution to non-formal
education activities, health education, and citizenship training. Of course,
many former detainees have no desire to return – even with another status in
prison – but it would be interesting to see how the accumulated knowledge of
the former prisoners could be a source of knowledge for those who remain
detainees.
(88) The question is complex but should be
studied through experiments conducted in certain countries.
(89) D. 6. Specific education
D.6.1. Education of women
The education of women is even more often
neglected; their minority within the penitentiary system would be one
explanation. Education for incarcerated women must start from their concrete
situation, which, more than for men, is a consequence of poverty and/or their
dependency (selling drugs for their companion). (90) Some women arrange to be
in prison when it comes time for them to deliver a child, simply to ensure that
they and their baby receive better care than outside. (91) The presence of
babies in certain prisons must be taken into account for formal and non-formal
education that includes the woman and her child (and the father, when possible).
Training must not be traditional and must lead to short-term employment (upon
release from prison) and additional training that is less accessible to women
who are heads of single-parent families.
(92) Socio-educational follow-up must be
available for women who are released from prison and “recuperate” their
children.
(93) Literacy and health education, conflict
resolution, domestic violence, budget management, and autonomy should be the
principal themes of education in women’s prisons … as well as men’s.
(94) Conjugal visits must help couples to
resist separation; they should also be occasions for the education of the
couple with respect to health, education of the children, respect for others,
etc.
(95) D.6.2.
Education for young people
Minors are generally subject to obligatory
school education. For many, this is not perceived as a right. Steps should be
taken to allow minors to integrate this right and this obligation into their
life plans.
If prison education is viewed from the perspective
of life-long learning, it must ensure that young adults have access to basic
education and literacy. In certain countries, young people are imprisoned as
early as 15 (even if the establishment isn’t called a prison). (96) The absence
of formal education, sometimes combined with failings in the family milieu,
should constitute an invitation to consider prison education within a global
context (formal, non-formal, professional, citizenship education, etc.) (97)
The attraction of new technologies should not be neglected, although it
should be relocated within a non-gadgetised context … even if the latter might
sometimes be used as the first point of contact with learning. In any event, a pedagogical relationship must
be maintained with the physical presence of an adult.
(98) The desire to access “modernity” must be
included in the development of education programmes, while avoiding the
“gadgetisation” of education.
(99) D.6.3. Education for families
The family is generally the first place of
learning; this should be preserved as long as possible, even during the
incarceration of a family member.
(100) Incarceration strips the father or mother
of parental authority. Family visits must be educational moments and the
incarcerated parent must (when possible) continue to exercise the role of being
responsible for the education of the children. Incarceration far from the
family prevents the organisation of these moments that could help the family to
continue to exist or reconstruct itself.
(101) Confinement of a parent (generally the
father) involves/gives rise to greater instability of the nuclear family:
greater poverty and greater risk of the children being removed from school or
dropping out. Family associations should be involved in reflecting on these
issues.
(102) The joint learning of the children and
the parents should be encouraged, especially during visits and mail exchanges.
(103) D. 7 Role of the universities and
research
There is a pressing need for cooperation with
universities that train teachers, to develop programmes and evaluations along
with actors in the field.
Research conducted within the context of
university work is not sufficiently appreciated or recognised. A distribution
mechanism must be found for the sharing of knowledge. Access for detainees and
former detainees, to the universities – even if rare – must be fostered as well
as attendance at certain courses (when adequate security conditions can be met,
of course).
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Note: We
are not speaking here of political prisoners for whom, generally, the level of
education generally corresponds at least to the national average.
Marc De
Maeyer .
15.11.06
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