Human Rights and Prisons - Rethinking Crime and Punishment

education. These included: it provided something to do; was a way to
positively focus the mind; developed positive mental health; bolstered selfesteem;
gave confidence; improved relations with prison staff; improved
relations with other prisoners; and built opportunities for the prisoner (and their
family) on release. Educational classes had important short and long-term
effects.
The UN Special Rapporteur on Education (2009:s4) has recently confirmed
these outcomes for educational programmes but also argues that education is
an „imperative in its own right‟. For the Special Rapporteur, education enables
„positive change and human capacity‟ (ibid:s10); it is a means for prisoners to
fulfil their potential. For these reasons, education should be a central feature
of prison life.
Despite the potential of education to secure a number of positive outcomes,
international commentators have indicated that there remain many barriers to
education in prisons. The UN Special Rapporteur (ibid), as well as Jones and
Pike (2010) have noted:
Negative attitudes – particularly of politicians and policy-makers, such
that prisoners are viewed as not deserving of education services;
Experiential barriers – that prisoners have low self-esteem, or learning
difficulties that inhibit their progress;
Institutional issues – education is undermined by: lockdowns; prisoner
transfers; poor libraries; lack of educational material; long waiting lists
for courses; lack of IT training; lack of teaching staff or support staff;
the withdrawal of education as a punishment measure; prisoners
having to self-fund education; discrimination of access dependent on
sentence length, classification, and so on; dated vocational courses;
and, the lack of awareness about learning difficulties and the means to
approach them.
In New Zealand, Baragwanath (2009) argues that few young prisoners receive
their educational entitlement, and that this breaches their educational rights.
She notes a number of deficiencies, including that:
Prison teachers do not work under a secondary school hierarchy;
Prisoners have restricted school times and no formal homework time;
Prisoners are given no incentive to continue learning post 16th
birthday, and consequently those aged 17 or 18 tend to miss out on
education;
In January 2009, just 130 prisoners were enrolled in correspondence
school;
It is almost impossible for those on remand to receive education, even
if they have lengthy remand periods;
If prisoners wish to access courses with the Open Polytechnic, they
have to get a student loan to assist with their fees. This impacts
negatively on their situation post-release.
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