Understanding the Educational Experiences of Imprisoned Men

(Re)education

Helen Nichols

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2021
• ISBN:
  9781000362435
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education General

Understanding the Educational Experiences of Imprisoned Men explores how adult male prisoners interpret and give value to their experiences of education, presenting an opportunity to consider how education can be beneficial to prisoners including and beyond the enhancement of employability skills.

While the primary aim for education in prison has been to increase employability skills to prevent reoffending, further attention needs to be given to the broader outcomes of educational experiences and the importance of the development of other personal attributes including self-confidence, empowerment and the ability to engage in positive relationships. This book considers how education is also used by men in prison to cope with prison life, to reconsider their identity and to develop and maintain relationships. It also discusses the relationships that prisoners have with their teachers and other prison staff as well as the relationships that different types of prison staff have between each other. In addition, the role that education can play in the process of desistance from crime is discussed to provide an understanding of what changes occur in men who participate in educational courses.

This book will be of interest to not only students and scholars with an interest in imprisonment, rehabilitation and criminal justice practice, but also educationalists, those who work in the prison setting and in social work. It may also appeal to those involved in community development programmes and broader sociological research.

1 Prison education in context

Introduction

The purpose of this book is to develop a detailed understanding of the value prisoners ascribe to their experiences of education in prison. Specifically, it explores how male prisoners in England and Wales interpret, give meaning to and use their educational experiences in a variety of ways. It also explores prisoners’ motivations for educational engagement. Rather than reporting on the outcomes of a single study, this book has been written reflecting on 10 years of varied experiences in researching and delivering education in prison and using those reflections when lecturing on prisons as an academic. As such, the book aims to present an understanding of what education in prison is for, based on a culmination of my experiences as a researcher and an educator both inside and outside of the prison environment. This brings together learnings from serving prisoners, prison staff, former prisoners and other individuals who have been part of my journey in considering this topic more fully.

Prison education includes library services, vocational education, cultural activities, social education, physical education, as well as the academic subjects which are included in narrower concepts of education (Chalatis, 2016) and developing a deeper understanding of education provision and experience in prison is of critical importance. For many years, prisons in England and Wales (and indeed far beyond) have been in a state that many describe as a ‘crisis’ (Cavadino et al., 2013). Budget and staffing cuts have had negative implications for offender learning, including, at times, the termination of education provider contracts and reductions in teachers’ pay. More broadly, prisons have experienced increased levels of violence, suicide, overcrowding and the dealing and use of illicit drugs. This has created penal institutions within which safety is not a certainty despite the secure nature of the environment itself (see HM Chief Inspector of Prisons, 2019). So why then, if these very serious and in some cases dangerous issues are continuing to occur in prisons, should we be concerned with education which may, at the outset, seem to be a less important issue in contemporary prison life?

It is important to appreciate that the majority of people serving prison sentences in England and Wales will eventually be released back into the community. The average sentence length of prisoners in England and Wales is 19.6 months (Ministry of Justice, 2020). Very few people in prison are serving whole life orders¹ and Long Term/High Security prisons, typically housing those with the longest sentences, only comprise 11% of the English and Welsh prison estate (13 out of 117 establishments). With the certainty of eventual release for most prisoners, the idea, in principle, is that those released should leave the prison better equipped to negotiate life in the free community, not only as law abiding citizens but also as people with something positive to contribute to the society to which they will return. From this perspective, education (in its various forms) holds a crucial value in contributing to the role of making people ready to successfully find a positive place in society. An education manager I spoke with when conducting research at a category A prison articulated this by saying:

A lot of these people will be released at some point, they could well be your next-door neighbour - who do you want as your next-door neighbour?

(Leon, Education Manager)

As will be discussed within this book, my interactions with serving prisoners, former prisoners and prison staff identified that engagement with educational initiatives has the capacity to create a more stable environment in which prisoners can serve their sentences securely and safely. In addition, and just as importantly, the staff, whose role it is to ensure that safety, can work in safe humane conditions that should be expected in modern penal practice. Traditionally, offender learning policy has primarily focussed on education in prison as a tool for the enhancement of employability prospects on release. This is because employment, for some time, has been recognised as one of the core pathways to reduce reoffending following release (Social Exclusion Unit, 2002). While there is no reason to disregard or criticise this focus, this book provides an opportunity to open up a discussion to consider the broader benefits that education in prison can offer. As will be seen throughout the main chapters, prisoners interpret the benefits of education in a range of ways, often citing the ‘soft skills’ that can be gained from such experiences that result in an increased sense of self-confidence. While the term ‘soft skills’ may often be considered as having lesser importance than ‘hard’ or directly vocational skills, it is the aim of this book to add strength to the meaning of ‘soft skills’ and to unpack how they transfer to beneficial outcomes of other areas of life, including and beyond employment. Drawing on key issues, including coping, identity construction, use of time, relationships and desistance, this work aims to contribute to a more thorough understanding of the potential that education in prison has and gives more attention to its overall value in the lives of those who engage with it.

The book is intended to be presented to a wide audience and not confined only to those with an interest in imprisonment and criminal justice practice. Hopefully it will be of equal interest to educationalists, and those who work in a prison setting, as well as social work students who seek an understanding of people in prison and how they view the world. Other areas of potential interest may include those involved in community development programmes and broader sociological study and research.

A brief story of education in prisons

My aim here is not to focus on analysing or critiquing policy concerning prison education, but rather providing insight, through the themes explored, into how the existing policy focus should be widened beyond the narrow scope of employability by considering prison education through a social scientific lens. It is important however, within this introductory context, to explain how employability became the primary concern of education delivery and policy in England and Wales by presenting a brief summary of education in prisons prior to opening up the ‘beyond employability’ discussion in the remaining chapters.

Pre-twenty-first-century policy

Education has been part of prison life since the late eighteenth century. Following his visits to prisons in England and Europe, John Howard published The State of Prisons (1777). In addition to reporting that living conditions in English prisons were unacceptable, Howard recommended that moral education should be implemented in English and Welsh prisons in the same way that it had been in Geneva. Howard’s new way of thinking about prisons and recommendations contributed to the drafting of the 1779 Penitentiary Act, which suggested that prisons should become an alternative sentence to death and the transportation of criminals to America. Considered ‘the most forward-looking English penal measure of its time’ (Devereaux, 1999: 405), the Act stated that ‘solitary confinement should be accompanied by religious instruction [as] it might be the means… of reforming the individuals…’ (from the 1779 Penitentiary Act cited in Bender, 1987: 23). The 1839 Prison Act established new rules regarding the education of prisoners whereby every prisoner, separately confined,² would be ‘…furnished with the means to moral and religious instruction, and with such suitable books as may be selected by the chaplain…’ (Prison Act, 1839: 4).

The growing fear of a ‘criminal class’ during the 1850s caused concern amongst the general public about violent street crime (Godfrey and Lawrence, 2005: 114) leading to assumptions that prisons weren’t working. Consequently, deterrence became the primary aim of the disciplinary regime to address this concern. With a focus on deterrence, the Carnarvon Committee (1863) criticised the role of education in the penal regime favouring tough work for prisoners. Despite this, chaplains were still able to provide any prisoner with in-cell religious instruction. The Prison Commission established by the 1877 Prison Act then relegated education to the corners of prison life following the view that it had less value in preventing reoffending than the deterrent impact of hard labour and prisoner separation. Any education above the minimum was viewed by the Prison Commission as a needless expense (McConville, 1995).

In an historically significant shift, the 1894 Gladstone Committee made recommendations concerning education in prisons such as the increased distribution of library books and the recommendation that all prisoners should be able to attend classes (Playfair, 1971). It was also recommended that education should be an important part of a prisoner’s overall rehabilitation which directly challenged the prior view of the Prison Commission in 1877. Bringing together reformist and deterrent approaches, the Gladstone Committee was described as being both courageous and radical in their findings with the fundamental conclusion that prisoners were being treated too much as a hopeless and worthless element of the community (Fox, 1952).

The Right Honourable Sir Matthew White Ridley was appointed to the Prisoners’ Education Committee in 1896 to produce a report regarding the education and moral instruction of prisoners. In particular, the Committee were to consider whether elementary education was being usefully applied in prisons, whether education should be conducted in prisoners’ cells or in classes and the extent to which lectures could be introduced with advantage to prisoners and without impairment to prison discipline (Prisoners’ Education Committee, 1896). The recommendations proposed by the investigation focussed on appointing fixed educational staff; providing education for both adults and juveniles; and providing learning materials, including frequently ‘refreshed’ library books. Later, during the period between 1922 and 1947 which was considered ‘the golden age of prison reform’, prisoners were allowed to be taught in association with each other rather than in their own cells.

The Report of the Commissioners of Prisons for the Year 1955 noted that the appointment of tutor-organisers continued to take place to the point where almost every prison had either a full- or part-time tutor-organiser who was responsible for educational programmes and supervising teaching staff. The way that education classes and activities were organised in the mid-1950s was directly informed by reports produced by HM Inspectors of the Ministry of Education – the organisation then responsible for inspecting prison education. The ‘rehabilitative ideal’ that championed the treatment of prisoners through pre-release courses and education was then overshadowed by a number of high-profile prison escapes during the 1960s (Scott, 2007). This led to a heightened focus on security in prisons and resulted in the erosion of the humanitarian goals of imprisonment, including education, training, association and better living conditions.

Despite the purported ‘zookeeping’ (Fitzgerald and Sim, 1980) nature of custody during the 1980s, the presence of prison education had not been completely lost. In 1982, the Bill on Education in Prisons was introduced, the purpose of which was to ensure that all men and women (convicted or unconvicted, sentenced and unsentenced) should have access to appropriate educational facilities. Such facilities, it was argued, would enable prisoners to experience a valuable, purposeful and progressive aspect of life and to preserve or acquire the capacity to think honestly and effectively so that they may be able to survive in the community after their release from prison (House of Commons Bill, 1982). The Bill made provision for a duty to provide information, access to daytime and evening education, education departments in prisons, reception and counselling, basic education, general and non-vocational education, vocational education, public examinations and pre-release classes.

Following the highly publicised riot at Strangeways prison (now more formally known as HMP Manchester) in 1990, an enquiry led by Lord Woolf revealed that in addition to the prison being in a very poor state, the extent to which the recommendations set out in the 1982 Bill on Education in Prisons had enabled prisoners in need of basic education to make education their daytime work was limited. Exposing the reality of the provision that did exist, Woolf (1991) reported that education hours were spread unevenly over a large number of prisons and an even larger number of prisoners. There were long waiting lists for courses, frequently cancelled classes and staff attitudes ranged from being ‘more enlightened’ to ‘more negative’ about the education of prisoners (Woolf, 1991).

Prior to the twenty-first century, education in prison primarily centred on rehabilitation with ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Series Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Table of Contents
• Preface
• Acknowledgements
• 1 Prison education in context
• 2 Finding voices
• 3 Pains and coping with time inside
• 4 Shaping and reshaping identity
• 5 Education and relationships
• 6 Education and desistance
• 7 Understanding education in prison
• Index