Higher education in Spanish prisons: A stakeholder-based empirical analysis

This article uses empirical information belonging to the EURODESIP (Diagnosis of the State of Higher Education in Penal Institutions in Europe) international research project and displays the status of higher education in Spanish prisons, with the aim of helping to gain a better understanding of how higher education is affecting penal institutions and what educational role higher education plays for the inmate population. The issue thus entails dimensions that are purely cognitive in nature and other dimensions pertaining to special education policy. A survey was administered to the inmate population enrolled in university-level studies during the 2006-07 academic year, and structured open interviews of the people in charge of educational programmes were conducted, inquiring into their practices (at basic and higher educational levels) in different prisons in Spain. The data found were then subjected to quantitative (descriptive) analysis and qualitative analysis (centring on the discourses of the different stakeholders). The results demonstrated the growing emergence of higher education in the Spanish prison system (especially in the last ten years) and the influence of higher education on penitentiary institutions. Some review and discussion are devoted to the short- or medium-term educational role higher education plays and the expanding borders and demands entailed in education in a prison setting. Special reference is made to the introduction and implementation of new communication and information technologies (particularly personal computers and the educational use of the Internet as distance education tools) as a characteristic trait of the more progressive, advanced demands made by the stakeholders in charge of providing prison education.