A race to the bottom – prison education and the English and Welsh policy context

Abstract

This article examines prison education in England and Wales arguing that a disjuncture exists between the policy rhetoric of entitlement to education in prison at the European level and the playing out of that entitlement in English and Welsh prisons. Caught between conflicting discourses around a need to combat recidivism and a need for incarceration, prison education in England exists within a policy context informed, in part, by an international human rights agenda on the one hand and global recession, financial cutbacks, and a moral panic about crime on the other. The European Commission has highlighted a number of challenges facing prison education in Europe including over-crowded institutions, increasing diversity in prison populations, the need to keep pace with pedagogical changes in mainstream education and the adoption of new technologies for learning. These are challenges confronting all policy makers involved in prison education in England and Wales in a policy context that is messy, contradictory and fiercely contested. The article argues that this policy context, exacerbated by socio-economic discourses around neo-liberalism, is leading to a race-to-the-bottom in the standards of educational provision for prisoners in England and Wales.

Keywords:

• prison education
• recidivism
• rights
• social justice
• educational policy
• wicked policy

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. 14 prisons are currently run by private companies on behalf of the state, equivalent to 15.3 per cent of the UK prison population (Howard League for Penal Affairs 2013). Since 1993, successful contractors have included G4S, Serco, and Sodexo.

2. In this meta-analysis, 18 studies were examined by the authors and classified into six categories: Corrective Reading, computer-assisted instruction, personalised instruction, other remedial education, vocational education, and General Education Development completion.

3. A sample of 3085 prisoners with access to study showed 19% had reoffended within a year of release, compared with 26% of 3000 similar inmates without this access. The sample was made up of 31% of prisoners whose custodial sentences ranged from 12 months to less than 4 years; 61% from 4 to 10 years and 7% whose sentences were 10 years or more.

4. This 20-country survey on Prison Education and Training in Europe can be found at: http://ec.europa.eu/education/adult/doc/survey/survey_en.pdf. 15 of 20 countries (including CY, FI, GR, HU, NL, PL, SK, UK-Scotland and UK-Wales) reported below 25% prisoners participated in education and training. However, a notable exception was Germany, where between a half and three quarters of their prison population participate in some form of education and training provision.

5. The LSC was an organisation at the time responsible for funding and planning education and training for over 16 year olds in England. The LSC has now been replaced by the Skills Funding Agency.

6. Established in 2014, the NPS is a statutory criminal justice service that supervises high-risk offenders released into the community. In 2003, the NPS was the whole probation service and dealt with all offenders.

7. In their report, commissioned by the Department for Education and Skills (DfES), the authors noted that educational provision for some learners fell short of their expectations and that, since the arrival of OLASS, education in the community had not significantly increased for prisoners on probation.

8. Prison governors are responsible for the management and security of prisons, remand centres and young offenders’ institutions.

9. The QCF provides a categorisation of nine levels of learning that exist in secondary, further, vocational education and higher education. Level 1 qualifications recognise basic knowledge and skills and the ability to apply learning with guidance or supervision. Level 8 courses are generally considered to be of Doctoral equivalency.

10. The MoJ, the Treasury, the Department for Education, the Department for Business Innovation and Skills, and the Home Office.