Education in prisons

On 11 and 12 October, the National Educational Forum 2023 was held at the Instituto Pedagógico Nacional, in which, with a thousand attendees, it is important to highlight this fact: the launching of the strategy “Peace Codes for Women Deprived of Freedom”.

Of course, this is not something strictly new, but it is completely necessary and encouraging. Nowadays, it is estimated that eleven million people in the world are deprived of their freedom as a result of conduct classified as punishable in their respective countries. According to the United Nations, this is equivalent to an average rate of 144 persons detained per one hundred thousand inhabitants. In Colombia, according to official statistics, there are about 196 thousand people deprived of freedom in national prisons, about 70 thousand in house arrest, 23 thousand in temporary detention centers and almost 3 thousand in prisons of territorial institutions. The rate per one hundred thousand inhabitants is around 326 persons deprived of freedom; more than double the global rate; but, it is worth noting that less than half that currently held by El Salvador, which has just exceeded the United States historical record.

To our country, this is a really large population that, in terms of education, should not be abandoned by the State. If we recognize that the right to education extends throughout life, prisoners cannot be excluded from access to quality education. The resocialization processes, the core of punishment, are not an internal matter of prisons, but the responsibility of governmental public policies and official educational authorities. The education of prisoners due to committing a crime is a main point for their rehabilitation and social reintegration after their release.

There are several experiences of education in Latin American prisons. Likewise, there are important systematizations in Argentine prisons management, for example, and several authors have offered invaluable results in relation to their practices and research. Some of them can be highlighted: Daniel Míguez with “Reciprocidad y poder en el sistema penal argentino”; Alicia Alcin with “La educación de jóvenes y adultos en contextos de privación de la libertad”, and a beautiful work by Carmen Antony about “Mujeres invisibles en las cárceles femeninas en América Latina”. And many other references, but enough to say that all of the authors agree that prisoners have the right to enter educational programs designed for their individual needs and purposes, that are aimed at their personal development under equal conditions, and that the directions they take in their lives help their dignity with respect.

Focused on that, in Colombia, the Presidential Council for National Reconciliation, the Ministry of Justice and Law, the Instituto Nacional Penitenciario y Carcelario (INPEC) and other institutions, have been working on various projects in several places. TheUniversidad Pedagógica Nacional has valuable experience in this field, not only because of agreements with the Inpec, but also because it has continued the training of students who were deprived of their freedom at some point.

In this sense, the purpose of the joint strategy launched between the Ministry of Education and the Ministry of Justice and Law is praiseworthy; even more when its initial central target is women: 7,000 women deprived of their liberty in Colombia. Among them, as stated by Minister Néstor Iván Osuna, more than 5,000 do not have a high school diploma and about 300 are illiterate. Of course, the nineteenth-century welfare approach of training them in cooking, embroidery or dressmaking should not be repeated; they have the right to the educational cycles established by law; to technical, technological and professional training according to their situation and contexts, as well as relevant for their employability. Like men, they have the right to a specific article guaranteeing their access to education as part of the Statutory Law already submitted to Congress.