There is an international consensus that education, social inclusion, and the reintegration of persons deprived of their liberty should be a priority for justice systems (United Nations Standard Minimum Rules for the Treatment of Prisoners (the Nelson Mandela Rules), 2015). This objective, however, has not been fulfilled since the historical outbreak of prison use, as we can see in the analysis of prison reforms (Foucault, 1975). The barriers to the practical implementation of reforms have been subsequently confirmed by ethnographic and other studies in prisons (Goffman, 1961, etc).
The imprisoned population, which was estimated at around 11 million people worldwide in 2018 (Institute for Criminal Policy Research (ICPR), 2019), is in a particular state of vulnerability, and the population usually comes from the least privileged economic, social, and cultural contexts (Coyle et al., 2016). In comparison with the general population, we have found a significant overrepresentation of people with substance use disorders and mental illnesses, minorities, and migrants. Moreover, the number of suicides and self-injuries is high in prisons (Coyle et al., 2016). People in prison are affected by histories of unemployment, low educational qualifications, high levels of illiteracy, experiences with homelessness, and the lack of legitimate social networks. These, alongside other disadvantages, aggravate the challenges which people in prison and people recently released from prison face in expressing their educational potential.
On the other hand, in the pedagogical field, several theoretical proposals have been formulated regarding education and prison, supporting our considerations about social reintegration and going far beyond ordinary school education (Costa, 2006; Piero & Letizia Caronia, 1993). Further studies analysed different educational models referred to as exemplary and explored which of these are focused on reintegration and recidivism reduction. Among these, we can mention the autonomous areas managed by the "university in prison" in Argentina (Friso & Decembrotto, 2018; Umpierrez, 2016), the "prisons without police" of the Associations for the Protection and Assistance of Convicts (APACs) in Brazil (Darke, 2014; Grossi, 2020), the Bollate model prison in Italy (Mastrobuoni et al., 2014), the "prison town" of Punta de Rieles in Uruguay (Ávila, 2018), the "island prison" of Bastøy in Norway (Shammas, 2014), and the experience of "respect modules" in Spain and France (Galán Casado, 2015; Icard, 2020).
In this presentation, we aim to analyse the educational proposal of the APACs in Brazil. The APACs were born with the idea of rethinking education in the prison context in order to stop generating criminogenic dynamics, and they now have 48 years of experience in management and coexistence with more than 50,000 imprisoned people (Restán, 2017).
APACs have reported lower reoffending rates than the traditional system, 8% to 15% compared to 70% nationwide (Conselho Nacional do Ministério Público, 2016), as well as reduced cost to the state budget. They have had very few episodes of escape, indiscipline, rebellion, and violence, in contrast to what has been evidenced within the Brazilian prison system (Pastoral Carcerária, 2018). Interest has grown in this model, which is currently a candidate as an official alternative to prison in the Brazilian context (Ministério da Justiça e Segurança Pública, 2019). Their educational proposal, which refers to the pedagogy of presence applied in the context of deprivation of liberty (Costa, 2006), stemming from the pedagogy of the oppressed (Freire, 1987), was analysed here.