Prison(er) Education


Book Description

This book is a major challenge to penal policy-makers, to accept the value of education - beyond 'basic skills', at a time when regimes have come to be dominated by cognitive thinking skills courses. Weaving anecdote with solid research and evaluation, the book presents a comprehensive account of education inside British prisons.




Prison Education Guide


Book Description

A Guide to Distance Learning Education Programs for Prisoners.




Prison Education and Desistance


Book Description

This book explores prisoners’ experiences of prison education and investigates whether participation in prison education contributes to an offender’s ability to desist from crime and increases social capital levels. While the link between prison education and reduced rates of recidivism is well established through research, far less is known about the relationship between prison education and desistance. The book demonstrates how prisoners experience many benefits from participating in prison education, including increased confidence, self-control and agency, along with various other cognitive changes. In addition, the book examines prisoners’ accounts that provide evidence of strong connections between prison education and the formation of pro-social bonds which have been shown to play a role in the desistance process. It also highlights the links between prison education and social capital, and the existence of a form of prison-based social capital arising from the prison culture. Written in a clear and direct style, this book will appeal to those engaged in criminology, sociology, penology, desistance, rehabilitation, the sociology of education and all those interested in learning more about the positive impact of prison education on prisoners.




Sisyphus No More


Book Description

Prisoners released from our bloated American correctional institutions return to a mostly unwelcoming society where they face onerous post-release challenges. No wonder recidivism is near fifty percent, adding tens of billions of dollars annually to the cost of American prisons. Sisyphus No More is a multifaceted argument for increasing prisoner education and training programs to promote the reintegration into society of returning prisoners and increase the likelihood of their securing living-wage jobs. By greatly reducing recidivism, the programs will pay for themselves several times over. Such programs also humanize the treatment of prisoners and help them escape the fate of Sisyphus, the mythological king condemned to a bitterly repetitive fate. The book has two parts. The first provides background on the American prison system and enumerates the tolls incarceration takes on prisoners, their families, and their communities and the costs released prisoners continue to pay that severely hinder their reintegration. In the second part, the authors set forth compelling psychological, sociological, ethical, and financial grounds for increasing education and training to support the reintegration of released prisoners. The final two chapters report on innovative prison education programs and identify steps toward making education and training a priority in our prisons.




Degrees of Freedom


Book Description

The first authoritative volume to look back on the last 50 years of The Open University providing higher education to those in prison, this unique book gives voice to ex-prisoners whose lives have been transformed by the education they received. Offering vivid personal testimonies, reflective vignettes and academic analysis of prison life and education in prison, the book marks the 50th anniversary of The Open University.




Evaluating the Effectiveness of Correctional Education


Book Description

After conducting a comprehensive literature search, the authors undertook a meta-analysis to examine the association between correctional education and reductions in recidivism, improvements in employment after release from prison, and other outcomes. The study finds that receiving correctional education while incarcerated reduces inmates' risk of recidivating and may improve their odds of obtaining employment after release from prison.




Prison Pedagogies


Book Description

In a time of increasing mass incarceration, US prisons and jails are becoming a major source of literary production. Prisoners write for themselves, fellow prisoners, family members, and teachers. However, too few write for college credit. In the dearth of well-organized higher education in US prisons, noncredit programs established by colleges and universities have served as a leading means of informal learning in these settings. Thousands of teachers have entered prisons, many teaching writing or relying on writing practices when teaching other subjects. Yet these teachers have few pedagogical resources. This groundbreaking collection of essays provides such a resource and establishes a framework upon which to develop prison writing programs. Prison Pedagogies does not champion any one prescriptive approach to writing education but instead recognizes a wide range of possibilities. Essay subjects include working-class consciousness and prison education; community and literature writing at different security levels in prisons; organized writing classes in jails and juvenile halls; cultural resistance through writing education; prison newspapers and writing archives as pedagogical resources; dialogical approaches to teaching prison writing classes; and more. The contributors within this volume share a belief that writing represents a form of intellectual and expressive self-development in prison, one whose pursuit has transformative potential.




How Effective Is Correctional Education, and Where Do We Go from Here? The Results of a Comprehensive Evaluation


Book Description

Assesses the effectiveness of correctional education for both incarcerated adults and juveniles, presents the results of a survey of U.S. state correctional education directors, and offers recommendations for improving correctional education.




Liberating Minds


Book Description

An authoritative and thought-provoking argument for offering free college in prisons—from the former dean of the Harvard Graduate School of Education. Anthony Cardenales was a stickup artist in the Bronx before spending seventeen years in prison. Today he is a senior manager at a recycling plant in Westchester, New York. He attributes his ability to turn his life around to the college degree he earned in prison. Many college-in-prison graduates achieve similar success and the positive ripple effects for their families and communities, and for the country as a whole, are dramatic. College-in-prison programs have been shown to greatly reduce recidivism. They increase post-prison employment, allowing the formerly incarcerated to better support their families and to reintegrate successfully into their communities. College programs also decrease violence within prisons, improving conditions for both correction officers and the incarcerated. Liberating Minds eloquently makes the case for these benefits and also illustrates them through the stories of formerly incarcerated college students. As the country confronts its legacy of over-incarceration, college-in-prison provides a corrective on the path back to a more democratic and humane society. “Lagemann includes intensive research, but her most powerful supporting evidence comes from the anecdotes of former prisoners who have become published poets, social workers, and nonprofit leaders.”—Publishers Weekly




Education in Prison


Book Description

The role of education in prisons, prisoners' decisions regarding education, the impact of prison culture on either encouraging or discouraging such activities, and the potential consequences of education for prisoners' reentry into society all have important implications. This extended analysis of prisoner education represents a unique contribution to an under-researched field, whilst also making important and original connections between research on education in prison and the literature on adult learning in the community. Through offering crucial insights into the varied motivations and disincentives that inform prisoners' decisions to study in prison (whether it be through distance learning or prison-based classes), the reader is also able to consider factors that inform decisions to engage in a broader range of positive and constructive activities whilst in prison. These research findings provide insight into how prison culture and prison policies may impact upon rehabilitative endeavour and suggest ways in which prisons may seek to encourage constructive and/ or rehabilitative activities amongst their inhabitants if desired. Based on interviews and questionnaires completed by British adult prisoners studying through distance learning, this qualitative study offers a valuable complement and counterpart to prison education studies that focus on measuring recidivism rates. The learner-centred approach used yields a nuanced and complex understanding of the varied ways in which education in prison actually operates and is experienced, and considers the consequences of this for the students' lives. As such, the findings offer further insight into important evidence resulting from recidivism studies reviewed within the book, whilst contributing to the reemerging interest in studies of prison life and prison culture that are based on prisoner interviews.




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