Educational Practice at the Prison System as a Guarantee of the Right to Education for Convicts: Possibilities and Limits

Abstract

Our study aims to reflect on the existing possibilities and limits to pedagogical practices developed in the prison space. Education is a social right, enacted and legally guaranteed in international and national provisions. These provisions foresee the offer of an education of a popular nature, as principles of human emancipation and autonomy under specific pedagogical practices for people deprived of their liberty. Under this prism, punishing and rehabilitating are the main objectives of the prison system, but the imperatives of the punishment end up overlapping with education and this dual goal that is expected of incarceration denounces contradictions in the organization of prisons. In this study, we used qualitative research under the perspective of Bogdan and Biklen (1994); bibliographical revision involved works already published during the latest five years in digital platforms of databases for scientifical works that were related to the descriptors (education practices; liberty deprived; difficulties; possibilities), which were combined between each other via Boolean operator “AND”. We observed the right to education for liberty deprived persons in several legal provisions; however, the effectivity of the existing pedagogical practices presents possibilities and limitations regarding the disinterest of society that has an influential look at prison schools, and also due to the lack of autonomy of teachers in prison schools, lack of school support, the non-recognition of the importance of education by other professionals, as well as the precariousness of the physical structure.