Engaging prisoners in education: Reducing risk and recidivism

Abstract

Engaging prisoners in education is one of a range of measures that could alleviate security risk in prisons. For prisoners, one of the main challenges with incarceration is monotony, often leading to frustration, raising the risk of injury for staff and other prisoners. This article suggests that prisoner engagement in education may help to alleviate security risk in prisons through relieving monotony and reducing re-offending by promoting critical thinking skills. It discusses some of the challenges to accessing higher levels of education in prisons and argues that if education was considered for its risk-reducing potential and measured accordingly, then some of those challenges could be reduced. It concludes with a discussion of projects undertaken in Australia and the UK that introduce digital technologies into prisons to allow greater access to the self-paced higher levels of education which could help realize the benefits of reduced risk and decreased recidivism rates