Barriers to participation in vocational orientation programmes among prisoners

Abstract

This study investigates the barriers to prisoner's participation in vocational orientation programmes, as well as the predictors of different types of barriers. Survey data derived from a project in a remand prison in Belgium provided the empirical evidence for the analyses. The results indicate that facing situational and informational barriers are most common. Based on the different kinds of barriers, various types of non-participants can be distinguished and multinomial logistic regression analyses are conducted to identify in what way participants of vocational orientation programmes differ from various types of non-participants. For instance, prisoners with a poor understanding of the Dutch language and those who never/rarely receive visitors participate less in vocational orientation programmes as they are more likely to confronted with informational barriers. Paths for future research and implications for policy and practice will be discussed.