Why do not more prisoners participate in adult education? An analysis of barriers to education in Norwegian prisons

Abstract

From a lifelong learning perspective, education during incarceration is crucial for prisoners’ rehabilitation. This article describes the authors’ development of their Perceived Barriers to Prison Education Scale (PBPES) and examines what deters prisoners from participating in education during their incarceration, how their perceptions differ depending on gender, age, educational level, learning difficulties, length of prison sentence, and whether the prisoners express a desire to participate in education or not. Within a larger survey conducted in all Norwegian prisons among all prisoners with Norwegian citizenship, the authors focused on those who did not participate in education (n = 838). To reveal the underlying constructs that comprise perceived barriers, they hypothesised a three-factor model to which they applied confirmatory factor analysis (CFA). The analysis confirmed the model, which comprised institutional barriers (e.g. insufficient practical arrangements; lack of access to computers and to the Internet), situational barriers (e.g. education is not considered to be of help in the current situation) and dispositional barriers (e.g. having difficulties in mathematics, reading, writing and concentrating), with good fit to the data. The authors used mixed-model analyses of variance to examine differences between subgroups of prisoners. Gender, age, educational level, learning difficulties and length of prison sentence were found to influence perceived barriers. The authors also observed that prisoners who wished to participate in education were more likely than others to perceive institutional barriers and less likely to perceive situational barriers.