Cooperation and education in prison: A policy against the tide in the Latin American penitentiary crisis

Abstract

Prison education is a fundamental human right and contributes to democratisation processes in Latin American countries. However, due to the current penitentiary crisis in Latin America (overcrowding, violence, drug dealing etc.), promoting education in prison is a difficult task. Conditions are further exacerbated by structural causes such as failures of the legal system in terms of viewing punishment as an ideology and the presence of institutional contradictions. Evoking Stephen Duguid’s assertion of the particular effectiveness of education programmes for high-risk offenders, the author of this article questions existing simplistic views which link education to recidivism in the Latin American context. A few years ago, the author was involved in conducting a survey in the context of EUROsociAL II, a programme set up by the European Commission aiming to consolidate cooperation between Latin America and the European Union on policy dialogue related to social cohesion. The purpose of the research was to understand and compare current prison education policies and to evaluate their effectiveness. This article complements the findings of that survey with insights gathered through a series of workshops and collective studies carried out with penitentiary authorities in Latin America. Despite a number of deep-rooted problems troubling this world region, the author is able to identify vibrant and encouraging practices of prison education. In order to reinforce these practices, he makes a case for calibrating education policies with prison-specific strategies, underlining the need for cooperation among different actors and institutions in prison education and hence for a reform of legal systems in the region.