Adult education in penal establishments
7705
Adult education in penal establishments
Bill Forster
Prison education officers see the education of inmates as having three strands:
1. Making up for what has been lacking in the past.
2. Converting deviants to acceptable norms.
3. Maintaining the equilibrium of the inmates and helping them to cope with the problems of serving sentence.
Similar strands, mutatis mutandis, might be discovered in adult education outside in a less sharply defined form.
In the last 15 years there has been a massive increase in the provision of education in prisons in terms of size of programme, expenditure and numbers involved, and the connection with LEAs has developed greatly. A good deal of remedial work is done but, while this earns general approval from the prison officers and the public, it should not be seen as an end in itself, for the acquisition of literacy or numeracy, may lead only to frustration if it cannot be applied. Recreational studies, which take place in ‘association time’, have a lower rating in the minds of both staff and inmates and are, therefore, more vulnerable. Vocational studies, which are separately funded, are more highly valued but are relatively expensive to mount and can entail problems when conditions of external validation compete with internal pressures in prison.
Complicating factors affecting educational provision include the variety of types of prison (short stay, long stay, open and young offenders’ establishments etc.); certain running debates on the relationship between treatment and training; and the general shortage of resources which highlights any situation where convicted criminals appear to attract special treatment.
First, it is important to recognise the need for a complete system; the provision of primary education implies ultimately the need for a system of higher education. Secondly, inmates are received at all stages of their personal educational development and, thirdly, a sense of progression and the ability to advance is an important factor in an inmate’s response to educational provision. But in order to make this provision, the prison education officer needs access to a variety of external agencies. At the moment these include: the London system of external degrees (and other universities with similar facilities); the Open University; university extra-mural departments and the WEA; part-time study for a range of professional bodies; outside visits (from Open Prisons) to institutions of higher education; other ad hoc arrangements, such as that where a university has expressed its willingness to accept an OU graduate as a post-graduate student.
It is outside my remit to present a statistical account of our prison population but one can assert with reasonable confidence that certain demographical changes have given considerable impetus to the provision of higher education in prisons. The increasing number of long-term sentences is well known whilst one could comment upon changes in social attitudes to penal offences, which have produced a higher proportion of previously educationally ‘advantaged’ inmates over, say, the last century; this is, of course, reinforced by the generally higher educational level of our society. Prison society is in many ways a microcosm of society at large, and reflects its trends. Moreover, some prison officials have commented upon the way in which recent increases in certain offences (e.g. the quasi-'political’ and those associated with drugs) have produced a new type of inmate, often of good educational background but who has ‘dropped out’ halfway through the process.
Observation of the way in which higher education works in prison can highlight certain factors with a more general relevance. The concept of progression is plainly more important to the student than many of us would allow; similarly the stress and anxiety of the student is often greater than we recognise - we often forget that the opportunity to succeed implies the opportunity to fail. But any such attempts to generalise are risky. The experience of the inmate is essentially that of the closed institution; moreover, guilt and trauma play their parts.
University extra-mural departments are in a position to make a uniquely valuable contribution to penal education. Their flexibility - of timing, curriculum and so on - and their ‘client-centred’ tradition mean that they can take into account the peculiar needs of each establishment and tailor their provision to the unique needs of each establishment. This is reinforced by the multi-disciplinary nature of the departments. A concern with teaching standards and an academic enthusiasm for the subject taught can do a great deal to get the teacher-inmate relationship right. It seems particularly important that the inmate should see himself as a student rather than as an inmate. Moreover, our traditional concern with the educationally underprivileged and with ‘second-chance’ education seems to place us under an obligation to do what we can.
Commentary
Teddy Thomas
Naturally, in the short time at his disposal, Mr. Forster cannot give a full account of his very interesting contribution to prison education which forms Vaughan Paper No 21. What he has done in this session is to raise some valuable general points about prison education, the central one for me being the way in which experience in dealing with prisoners confronts one with the reality that education is value laden. If this is difficult to accept, try teaching criminology to prisoners. Rather in the same way, it was alleged, that early workers’ classes found conventional economic theory dissonant from their experience, prisoners will indicate the value system underlying standard deviancy theory. But, it may be argued, surely some education is morally and socially neutral. What of physical education? Or woodwork?
In this case, the decision to deploy resources to such courses are value laden, not the content of the courses themselves. What should be done, for example, in response to a request from a group of IRA prisoners for classes in Irish? There is nothing inherently political in the Irish language itself, but whether or not such classes should be mounted is dependent, to a great degree, on political considerations.
But much of the Vaughan Paper is concerned with educational facilities for prisoners, and, especially relevant for this audience, with Responsible Body involvement. There is not time merely to repeat his findings, but I underline their commendation to you.
Professor Jepson, in his introductory remarks, mentioned the education of the staff, the other half of the prison community. They have educational needs too and sometimes deplore the understanding of prisoners' needs, and the lack of understand of theirs. Mr Forster has tried to draw our attention, and interest to a small public, but one which relies heavily on ‘outsiders’. It is an area which includes staff and prisoners, and one which is deserving of any resources we can marshal. There is, in every penal establishment, an education officer who organises programmes for prisoners. There is also a training officer whose job it is to organise staff education. Responses will be uneven, but a beginning might be made with an approach to them.
Notes on the discussion
Elizabeth Monkhouse
Among the points made by the participants were the following:
1. The value-laden character of education comes out clearly in penal establishments where even physical education can become a politically loaded subject.
2. There is concern about the needs of prison staff and their families and those of education officers. These groups are also isolated and, though their moral strength is commendable, their educational needs are acute and they sometimes feel, justifiably, that the inmates enjoy more privileges than they do. The flexibility of extra-mural education can be turned to good account here, encouraging staff-prisoner groups, family groups, or various forms of in-service training. The libraries of prisons, which are usually good, may be seen as a useful resource.
3. Attention might be turned from the internal power struggle into more constructive channels which bring together staff and prisoners and encourage mutual support among the families of the latter. On the whole the competitive style of work of the Open University leads to climbing educational ladders alone, while work in groups, perhaps at a lower level, may prove more broadening and supportive.
4. The LEAs and the Home Office recognise the need for special training for part-time tutors working in prisons where they have to handle unusual and testing situations.
In replying to the discussion, Bill Forster argued that specialist training carries some danger of turning tutors into something too closely resembling prison staff and so losing their peculiar value to the inmates as academic figures from the outside world.
He stressed that there is a great variety of expectation on the part of the inmate-student. While some see the educational ladder solely as a means of escape from their environment, and others are seriously trying to change their life-style, it is often difficult to determine which takes precedence.
Reproduced from 1977 Conference Proceedings, pp. 43-45 SCUTREA 1997