Research in prisons. Notes for future social scientists

This article is the result of a reflection on the possibilities and difficulties of empirical social observation in prison, from the perspective of sociological methodology teaching applied to university degrees in criminology. What is here exposed is based on the practical experience accumulated by the authors via mul-tiple studies carried out in Spain and in different Ibero-American countries. A first draft of this text was created with the purpose of being used as practical research notes for students of criminology who began their training and had no profession-al experience in this field of study. This version has been adapted, so that it may be used generally by researchers and students of social sciences who need a basic guide to the design and execution of social research projects in prisons. The paper assumes a didactic orientation; it is a proposal that offers guidelines to improve the teaching and application of the research methodology in the penitentiary systems.