About the project
The purpose of PrisonEd is to investigate how education can facilitate the employment of inmates upon release, thereby preventing them from relapsing into criminal behavior. This will support the ultimate goals of the educational system, including inclusion, learning, and community.
For decades, Norway's national curriculum, and now with the renewal of the national curriculum (Fagfornyelsen), has emphasized learning across the life span. Learning across the life span implies that education can equip students with essential life skills and provide them with competence to navigate their lives, participate in the workforce, and engage in society.
Objectives
The purpose of the project is to examine the role education plays in the extent to which released inmates’ relapse into criminal activity. In this context, inmates constitute a neglected population, especially since research has indicated that education holds promise in reducing recidivism rates.
Despite this, there are several challenges regarding education in Norwegian prisons.
- Firstly, many inmates wish to participate in education while incarcerated, but many prisons lack the capacity to offer this to all interested inmates.
- Secondly, many inmates do not participate because they consider their own basic academic skills too poor to benefit from and complete education.
- Thirdly, the number of inmates participating in prison education in Norway has undergone a drastic reduction since 2015.
This is paradoxical since Norwegian correctional services have the stated goal of making prison rehabilitative. Therefore, PrisonEd will investigate the factors that characterize inmates' opportunities to participate in and complete education in prison. Imprisonment is a loss of freedom, not a loss of rights.
Thus, there is a responsibility to raise awareness about this student population—they have the exact same rights and educational goals as any other students in the Norwegian primary and secondary school system.
Results
In PrisonEd, we will examine the following issues:
- What is the correlation between the level of education before incarceration and the likelihood of recidivism?
- To what extent do inmates who complete education in the correctional system have lower rates of recidivism compared to inmates who do not participate in education during their sentence?
- To what extent does education contribute to higher employment rates for inmates after release?
Background
PrisonEd is a project with population data from Statistics Norway as its core. It will be carried out by researchers at the Department of Special Needs Education, University of Oslo, in close collaboration with stakeholders, with the help of external expert collaborators and an international advisory board.
Financing
The project is financed by the Department of Special Needs Education, University of Oslo
Cooperation
Lise Øen Jones, Professor at the University of Bergen
Arve Asbjørnsen, Professor at the University of Bergen
Maxine Winstanley, Senior Lecturer at the University of Central Lancashire, UK
Aina Irene Weidal, Principal at Grønland Voksenopplæring
Stian Estenstad, Nettverk etter Soning & Visitortjenesten, Oslo Røde Kors
