El estigma penitenciario y la escuela en la cárcel como estructura de mediación

Abstract

This article is based on an ethnographic fieldwork carried out in a Women´s Prison School in Spain. Based on Goffman’s (2006 [1963]) analysis of stigma, we studied how prison education acts as a mediating structure in the social relations between women and other people, and mitigates or magnifies prison stigma, including the way in which inmates perceive themselves. That is to say, “being students” while still in jail allows them to transcend the depiction of “delinquent”, however, performing certain activities outside of jail underlines their condition as such. Two fundamental ideas underlie the following essay: first, that the school institution stands as a “civilizing” place in which to learn “values” and social belonging norms; second, the special significance that this institution acquires when located in so-called marginal contexts, which turn the institution into a place where “second chances are built”.