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.

For this purpose, the concept of socio-education presented by Costa (2006) has been applied, considering education in prison as the effect of the intersection between different programmes aimed at reintegration, such as school, as well as social, psychological, and material assistance. The study also considered non-formal, informal, peer, and societal education. We started with analysis of these model experiences with a first phase aimed at investigating the self-description, as these experiences present themselves externally; document analysis was carried out, followed by open and semi-structured interviews with the main actors of the models, namely, directors, judges responsible for the execution of sentences, teachers, social workers, psychologists, and educators. These experiences were contextualised in the light of local laws on penal execution and the penal system. For further analysis of the practices and their applications, in the second phase, a literature review of research on this model was conducted. Subsequently, an ethnographic study designed for contexts of deprivation of liberty (Vianello & Sbraccia, 2016) was conducted during forty days in two units indicated as an international model (Restán, 2017). A field diary was written every day. Furthermore, focus groups and open and semi-structured interviews with persons deprived of their liberty were developed and recorded. Attention was given to ethical standards required for working with human beings and processing personal data, and the study complied with all required national, European, and international laws and ethical standards. In particular, specific ethical procedures were followed for working with vulnerable adults, such as convicted persons (Vianello & Sbraccia, 2016), who are subject to a relative lack of control over their own choices. The acquired data have been used to underline the differences between the prison study, the law, and the self-description of the model in order to highlight how education is conceived in these spaces and how it develops in everyday practices within the units.

In the increasingly urgent debate concerning education and prison, the experience of the APACs in Brazil offers us a valid and concrete transformation—albeit with some points of criticism—of educational systems and practices for dealing with the education of convicted persons by means of rethinking the environment of deprivation of liberty, in order to make it more adequate for the individualisation of the educational path aimed at returning to society. In addition to formal education, which should be guaranteed but is only guaranteed to a minimum part of the prison population, it is necessary to rethink prison as an "educational community", meaning that all people participate in it as both objects and subjects of the education implemented within the institution. Work is essential, but not sufficient, and it cannot be the sole aim of an education that aspires to the return of persons deprived of their liberty to society. The APACs have also shown us that institutions and society must also be "re-educated" to see persons who are convicted as human beings who must return to society. It is also necessary to guarantee an environment of trust through the co-participation of the convicts themselves in the institutions’ activities, and there must, at the same time, be an adequate selection of staff to deal with security, who must both believe in and contribute to the educational project. Through measures that further increase spaces of encounter, it is possible to reconstitute the broken links between individuals in prison and the community outside. The APACs may be an alternative educational proposal to the one found in the conventional prison system, but they are certainly not the only one, and there is a need to study other concrete educational proposals.

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