Are inmates different higher education students?

Education is a fundamental human right, essential to exercise all other rights. Education promotes freedom and personal autonomy and generates relevant benefits for developing countries. From these premises, in freedom deprived contexts, inmates should not suffer from further deprivation of their rights, among which the right to education is included. Thus, it is important that countries establish legal arrangements of educational systems that ensure access to a fair, equitable and quality educational programs in prisons. In this area, we present a case study in higher education, during the years of 2010-2013, which occurred between Guarda prison and Guarda Polytechnic Institute, to do this; we have analyzed interviews for, school reports from four degrees. From this study, we concluded that the teaching and learning of inmates, having to be equal in terms of skill acquisition is complex, demanding and has to occur pedagogically in a different style, the computer being a complement which is almost nonexistent in the education process. (C) 2013 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd.