Opinion: prison education has a long tradition in Ireland north and south and is of immense value to imprisoned persons.
By Katharina Swirak, UCC and Gillian McNaull, Queen's University Belfast
For the past number of years, we have taught Criminology in Cork Prison and Hydebank Wood Secure College in Belfast with our colleagues. As critical criminologists, we don’t focus on teaching what most people imagine Criminology to be (CSI type crime scene analysis or serial killers).
Instead, our classrooms widen the lens on understanding how crime can be interpreted in the context of social inequalities and intersecting structural harms – including poverty, racism, ablism and gender inequalities. This also includes thinking about what can stop people from coming into contact with criminal justice, and asking if prisons really make communities safer.
Both the Cork 'Inside Out’ and Belfast ‘Learning Together’ classrooms build upon other prison education provision, bringing university students into the prison education classroom to study alongside imprisoned persons for the duration of an academic term. University and prison students sit side-by-side as equals in a circle, and together learn to analyse and deconstruct academic concepts and texts, interweave their own life experiences into the debate and analysis and importantly consider how we may all be affected by the broader political economy and social contexts.
The prison-university education classroom humanises those who are typically 'othered.'
Prison education has a long tradition in Ireland north and south and is of immense value to imprisoned persons. Education in prison can provide a haven, offering relief from the monotonies and deprivations of imprisonment and can also offer the tools for more positive reintegration after prison life. Here are some of the many valuable lessons we have learnt so far.
'A thirst for learning'
Prisons contain people from underserved communities who have survived a catalogue of adverse life circumstances. This includes those who have disproportionately been excluded from school and received limited life chances. You find people in the prison classroom with a thirst for learning, having often been marginalised from such opportunities in the real world. The intellectual curiosity and ability to challenge and interrogate established knowledge can be powerful in this context, and immensely impactful for educators and students alike.
The complexity of classroom debates
The impact of lived experience of criminal justice in a criminology classroom cannot be understated. It provides a level of nuanced understanding that is difficult to replicate in the academic classroom setting and creates new understanding. The prison education flipped classroom teaches the teacher as much as the students being taught.
We have learned that invaluable learning happens through the dialogue established between our outside and inside students in the classroom. We are astonished weekly at the complexity of debates that arise. Far from speaking with one voice, all of our students have their unique vantage point on issues of criminal and social justice that reaffirms our knowledge that one can never talk about ‘prisoners’ or ‘students’ as homogenous groups.
Perhaps the most important lesson from the prison-university classroom is its message of hope.
Dismantling stereotypes
We have learned that bringing outside students into the prison education classroom helps to dismantle the many stereotypes that they can commonly hold regarding people in prison. The encounter with persons inside prison walls is a humbling one. The prison-university education classroom humanises those who are typically ‘othered.’ Students realise that people in prison could be their sons, daughters, sisters and brothers. In fact, often students from inside and outside prison inhabit the same geographical and social populations in the ‘real’ world, with the classroom serving to break down the boundaries that exist in those communities, building connectivity that extends beyond the prison walls.
Hard work, humour and laughter
The prison-university classroom builds an inclusionary community inside the prison. People in prison experience double social exclusion: both in communities they have never been ‘habilitated’ in outside of prison and how imprisonment exiles them from society. Hard work, humour and laughter help create a community of learning, one where we never have to intervene other than convey the bad news that time is up and our weekly session is once again over. At the end of semester graduation events, it is not unheard of for our students and staff alike to shed tears at the coming end of this powerfully emotive experience.
Our teaching in prison education classrooms has also informed our mainstream teaching in the university. Learning to use teaching tools that bring people together across social divides has helped us as educators back in our everyday university teaching.
The prison-university classroom creates a microcosm, one away from the deprivations that prison life naturally brings with it, and also away from the pressures of building up a strong CV while holding down a job or two. Here, we can build a community of learning and mutual respect that creates a vision of possible societal transformation across social and institutional differences, allowing inside and outside students to remain hopeful that we can all contribute to change in whatever limited ways. Perhaps this is the most important lesson from the prison-university classroom – its message of hope.
An art and digital exhibition by students from the Education Unit in Cork Prison and UCC is on display on Spike Island until the end of August
Dr Katharina Swirak is a lecturer in Criminology at the School of Sociology and Criminology at UCC. Dr Gillian McNaull is a Research Fellow in the School of Social Sciences, Education and Social Work at Queen's University Belfast.
The views expressed here are those of the author and do not represent or reflect the views of RTÉ
