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 (Hawley et al., 2013). 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.

Appeals to evidence for the resolution of wicked problems: the origins and mechanisms of evidentiary bias

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An Overall Picture About Academic Literature Focused on Online Learning in Prison

“…The results show a trend to value rehabilitation policies over punitive policies ADAMS, 2012;BARREIRO-GEN;NOVO-CORTI, 2015;MOREIRA et al, 2017a), even though the discrepancy between discourses and practices is also pointed out (HOPKINS, 2015;CZERNIAWSKi, 2016). Security issues continue to weigh heavily on political decisions, as well on the implementation of practices that underpin the most avant-garde discourses.…”

Distinctly divergent or hanging onto English coat-tails? Drug policy in post-devolution Wales

“…Despite the magnitude of these changes, however, academics continue to disregard the distinct policy context that exists in Wales (e.g. Czerniawski, 2016; Forrester et al, 2013). As a response to this continuing failure, this article will showcase the importance of taking Wales seriously by offering a critical analysis of the WG’s approach to drug policy.…”