H.17. Prison Education for Democracy. Tensions and Contradictions of a Transformative Space
Prison education (PE) is a broad and complex field where Adult Education and Justice intersect within Institutional configurations that vary depending on the meanings and roles they play within the national context of reference.
Despite the differences, the international landscape is crossed by common trends and tensions. In many national contexts, penal populism (Pratt 2007) and punitive common sense reinforce carceral expansion and the marginalisation of PE, legitimising overcrowding, security-driven priorities and the systematic sacrifice of educational opportunities and transformative practices, as highlighted by recent research on prison universities and cultural programmes behind bars (Borghini & Pastore 2021; 2024).
Yet, in this cultural and political climate, interesting examples emerge depicting PE as a (seemingly) contradictory space of multiple and overlapping tensions, i.e. where disciplinary power and counter-hegemonic practices coexist. Building on critical and transformative pedagogies, prison education can nurture forms of critical consciousness, autobiographical reflexivity and collective learning that re-politicise everyday life and open up spaces for hybrid forms of subjectivities that neither fully conform to nor fully resist the carceral order. Briefly, where prisonised subjectivities coexist with alternative/resilient/resistant identities and ways of being.
We particularly welcome contributions that: (a) theorise the tensions between disciplinary power, democratic education and social justice; (b) empirically explore prison education practices (including higher education, artistic and cultural projects, peer-education and convict-led initiatives); (c) investigate how PE reconfigures institutional arrangements, professional roles and public engagement between prison, university and civil society; (d) reflect on methodological and ethical challenges of researching PE as a transformative democratic space.