Inclusion and social exclusion issues in university education in prison: considerations based on the Italian and Spanish experiences

This paper focuses on university education in prison as a strategic tool for building social inclusion. Using quantitative and qualitative methods, it examines the Italian and Spanish experiences in this area. In Italy and Spain, the idea of punishment having a rehabilitative function has been supported by strong motivation to achieve this ideal. In both countries, the way in which inmates are treated by the prison system was established to oppose prison systems designed by authoritarian regimes. However, the rhetoric of rehabilitation that is now prevalent seems to morally legitimise imprisonment and encourage the emergence of forms of ‘symbolic violence’. For these reasons, focusing attention on higher education in prison takes the form of an analytical and critical exercise that is particularly useful, as it allows the distance between prison and society, and prison and prisoner stereotypes, for example, to be questioned. It also enables the transformative effects that education has on the individual and on the system, beyond any rhetoric of treatment, to be understood.