A European Perspective on Nordic Prison Systems and Prison Education, by Kevin Warner, Co-Ordinator of Prison Education, Ireland
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A European Perspective on Nordic prison systems and prison education, by Kevin Warner, Co-ordinator of Prison Education, Ireland. Address to the Nordic conference on prison education, Tromso, Norway, 22-25 May 2008. An adult education approach. In the first part of this talk this morning, I wish to focus on two themes, which, as you will see, tend to blend together: firstly, the idea of adult education; and, secondly, how we see prisons and prisoners. Then, later, I want to offer some impressions of penal policy in Nordic countries. But I begin with some poems written by prisoners in Ireland, from an anthology called Another Place (1). The first is by Robert Hendrick, who describes life in a shared cell in Cork Prison: Home for the Time Being I look around the cell, what do I see? Two pisspots in the corner, on the locker a T.V. On the wall is a shelf, with tapes and C.Ds. On the others there’s posters of Bob Marley And naked ladies. There’s a button too, we use as a bell. Oh! I almost forgot, there’s a stereo as well. There’s plastic cutlery, a bowl and a jug for our tea, Two chairs to sit on while we watch telly. We watch the box without a word. It’s only seven inches; sounds absurd. We watch the Premiership on a Saturday night, We watch films, a comedy or two, They cheer us up when we’re feeling blue. Our greatest fear as we sit in our chairs Is when that bloody line it just appears. For then we know the battery’s gone So we put on the radio and suffer on. A shorter poem by Tony Clancy of Limerick Prison finds a way to move beyond the confines of prison: Out I walked to the door it was locked from outside. I walked to the walls they were all about. I walked to the window but couldn’t see out. So I climbed in my head and left myself out. Kevin Lynch, a prisoner in Portlaoise Prison, is also elsewhere in his imagination, but he is brought sharply back to reality: Sweet Dreams All alone I dream of night time with you a cold winter’s night it is. I see your face of beauty smiling like the sun it warms me in this cold. I see our house our home then I’m in our room. In my mind nothing has changed I see the picture on the wall with the baby in the basket. You have everything just right The scented flowers in the dish by the dresser and the water bottle in the bed. As in life you have your side and I have mine. We slip under the covers and entwine in each others embrace. You say your feet are cold but nothing of you could be cold to me. Then we settle your head is on my chest. With one arm and one leg across me. It seems so natural, so right I haven’t a care in the world and everything is quiet. We drift into a beautiful lovers sleep. We are like dancers in the night You turn and I turn with you I turn and you turn with me then we are still, moulded together our spirit is one in the night. Morning wakes us from our embrace the soul of day is echoed in your face I just lie and stare at you. The dribbles on your cheek and the look I love so much. My hand reaches out to you but you disappear, I wake up all alone again. I would like to ask what is the point, the purpose, in teaching or facilitating people in prison to produce such poems? I want to stress two purposes that go beyond the gaining of qualifications, the preparation for work or the addressing of criminality, which are so often seen as the goals of education in prison. Firstly, I believe writing in this way performs a critical function in helping a person in prison to cope with imprisonment; it counteracts ‘the detrimental effects of imprisonment’, contributes in some way towards ‘normalisation’. Secondly, to be able to write a poem like that, then to see it in typed or printed form, must help develop the self-confidence, self-respect or self-esteem of the writer – an intangible benefit, but one that is critically important. I will return to the idea of boosting the prisoner’s self-esteem later. Of course, these two purposes – helping prisoners counteract the negative effects of prison, and helping them develop in some way as people – can be achieved in many different ways. An adult education approach thinks in terms of ‘the whole person’ and advocates a ‘wide curriculum’, as recommended in the Council of Europe report, Education in Prison (2). So, virtually anything students may be interested in can serve these purposes. To take just one prison in the West of Ireland, Castlerea, the following subjects are among those offered: English, Literacy, Drama, Creative Writing, Art, Computers, Music, Yoga, Horticulture, Woodwork, Cooking, Health Education, Crafts, Stone and Wood Carving, Stained Glass, Leatherwork, Tiling, Mathematics, Business Studies, Computerised Accountancy, Personal Development, English as a Second Language, Haulage Licence course, Upholstery, Pre-release course and Debating (3). It does not matter, in a way, what is taught. What matters is what this teaching does. I visited the prison here in Tromso two days ago. In a metal-workshop I was shown a most impressive miniature truck that had been made by a prisoner. I was told that this man had been very agitated and stressed when he came first to the prison, but that as he got into the task of producing this fine work he became calmer. No doubt his sense of himself, his self-esteem, grew also. This reminded me of a prisoner in one of our prisons who continually got into fights, but then found something he needed in art classes. His aggression declined and, as he said himself, in working on his art he found he got ‘cooler and cooler’. May not an openness to the interests and hidden talents of those in prison be more effective in reducing conflict than anger-management courses? So, here are two ideas I feel I sorted out for myself many years ago: a concept of adult education, about which I will say more shortly; and an understanding that prisons damage people and that the job of all of us in prison work is to try to reduce that damage. Prisons are like surgery, necessary at times, but they really need to be used sparingly; and then, when used, the negative side-effects should be reduced as much as possible. That idea about prisons is central to Council of Europe thinking (4), and also very much part of Nordic penal policy. Both of these ideas have been strongly challenged in the prison world in recent times. The recognition that prison has detrimental effects is especially contested by the idea that ‘prison works’. However, I still hold firmly to both of my original ideas. I want to say a little more now about what I mean by adult education. When I began teaching literacy to adults in Manchester way back in the 1970’s we were very influenced by work such as that of Paulo Freire (5), who held that all people have the right and potential to fully realise themselves, or to ‘liberate’ themselves as Freire would put it, to develop in their own unique ways. So, the teaching of reading and writing to adults was built on the learners’ own words, dialect and life-experiences. When their own thoughts and stories – whether written, tape-recorded or dictated – are set out in printed form, this validates their lives, it tells them that they are people with something to say. Just as it does for the writers in the anthology I drew from earlier; in such poems the writer finds another self, a self different from that of ‘offender’. So, literacy teaching is not mainly about skills, but mostly about self-confidence and self-esteem (6). Later on I read American adult education writers like Jack Mezirow, who speaks of ‘transformative learning’, education through which we radically change our view of ourselves and our world in a positive way (7). I expect there are Nordic writers on education who similarly stress the central role of holistic personal development and the growth of qualities such as self-awareness, self- confidence and self-respect. For me it was wonderful to hear a leading person in the prison world speak of prisoners in this way too. Many years ago, also on a Sunday morning at the end of a conference (this time in Sigtuna, Sweden), I heard K. J. Lang, the long-time Director General of the Finnish prison service, describe how most prisoners were ‘socially and psychologically disabled’ and had been ‘deprived of all chances to develop and use what we can call their stronger parts’. He identified the needs of those held in prison in this way: ‘First of all prisoners/clients need to improve their self- confidence. Therefore all our efforts when organising correctional services should be analysed as to their ability to support, uphold and redress the self-esteem of the prisoner’ (8). Thinking such as this lies behind the Council of Europe’s Education in Prison, which asserted that a wide curriculum, addressed to the whole person, should be offered to all prisoners. Yet, long before the Council of Europe adopted that perspective, it was articulated in 1931 by Austin MacCormick, a senior person in the Federal Bureau of Prisons in the USA.