Teaching in prisons is part of a lifelong education approach education, an inalienable right enshrined in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which states that "everyone has the right to education" (Article 26). The obligation to provide primary education in all prisons in France, accessible to all inmates, makes this activity all the more attractive, as it is in line with the principal mission of the sentence of deprivation of liberty: the insertion or reintegration of persons placed under judicial authority. Education appears to be a means of learning, but also of demonstrating a desire for rehabilitation. Prisoners have a very low level of education compared with the average level in the French population (Ministry of Justice, 2023). What's more, the penal population is made up mainly of rather poor young men with distended family ties (Combessie, 2018) from working-class backgrounds and little professional experience (Guérin, 2003). This penal population is therefore quite fragile and gives rise to particular cultural, social and economic rehabilitation needs. If incarceration is to be useful, it must serve social justice. Thus, the teaching professionals who work with these inmate-learners have a plural role, that of instructor, educator but also resource person (Gavard-Veau, 2023).

As part of our thesis project, we conducted a mixed-methods study involving a period of observation, interviews and the nationwide distribution of a survey in order to understand the role of teachers in the provision of education in prisons, and thus analyze the motivations and perspectives of their intervention. We first assume that teachers who choose this atypical environment are pursuing a goal of emancipation from institutional constraints that don't always allow for favorable teaching conditions for learners. Secondly, we suggest that prison conditions paradoxically offer a favorable setting for exchanges between teachers and learners, fostering professional recognition as well as a good relationship with instruction for the learner.

Our results show that teachers who work in prisons have very heterogeneous social characteristics and backgrounds. However, we are able to identify four of the engagement profiles of these teachers that are quite disparate. Some respond to a global education logic (Kherroubi, Millet and Thin, 2018) that makes it possible to consider several dimensions of education, including socialization, the (re)construction of self-confidence and the exploitation of potential. Others have more intrinsic motivations for commitment (Berger and d'Ascoli, 2011) and give a particular meaning to their action – while having a sense of social utility – by being at the service of a broader cause than that of education. Our field study and the analysis of our survey showed favourable relations between teachers and prisoners, this social climate favouring the personal development of incarcerated individuals as well as their willingness to enrol in training and teaching courses. This commitment on the part of the teachers and this serene climate allows detainees to enter into a fair and equitable logic of (re)socialization for a better reintegration afterwards in order to break the social inequalities to which they are and have been subject.

The experience of imprisonment, as established by the Italian penal system, is supposed to be a moment of transition for the subject, aimed at social integration. However, this purpose often takes the form of a rhetoric of re-education as an end in itself, carried out by the whole institution, favouring processes of disculturation, control logics and imprisonment (Clemmer, 1940; Goffman, 1978; Vianello, 2019). Factors that make the inside/outside dichotomy seem insurmountable include the separation of the prisoner and the institution as a whole from the rest of society, the endemic criticality of prisons, and the difficulty of realising the rehabilitative purpose of punishment. Imprisonment creates a complex social environment where power dynamics, spatial and temporal constraints and institutional rules intertwine to create a paradoxical relational framework for inmates (Acocella and Pastore, 2020). Formal regulations promote an unequal balance of power within the system, shaping an environment where control over time and space becomes a tool for maintaining authority. Moreover, methods of regulating behaviour, such as disciplinary measures and systems of rewards and punishments, further reinforce a sense of dependency and control among prisoners (Foucault 1976; Melossi and Pavarini 1977; Gallo and Ruggero 1989; Rostaing 2014).

Nevertheless, the presence of academic institutions in prison contexts represents an opportunity to cross the threshold of the penitentiary in symbolic and non-symbolic ways, establishing contact between the inside and the outside (Pastore and Borghini, 2021; Pastore, 2018). From this point of view, the experience of the University Prison Poles allows a particular reading of the relational dynamics between inside and outside (Borghini, 2020). The establishment of the National Conference of Rectors' Delegates of the University Prison Poles (CNUPP) in 2018 has led to the creation of a national coordination between the University Prison Poles present in the territory, for the exchange of good practices at local level and the presence of a single institutional interlocutor with the prison administration at national level (Prina, 2020). However, it seems necessary to highlight how this presence of the academic institution in prison contexts can be instrumental for both parties, the prison and the university.

On the basis of these preliminary considerations, this paper aims to present the first results of a qualitative empirical study carried out in 2023 on the Prison University Poles in Tuscany. In the context of a complex process of ethnographic exploration of the prison camp, informal interviews were conducted with educational staff and detained students, both those about to enrol at university and those already in a university career.

Overall, the aim of the research is to go beyond the rhetorical celebration of the presence of the university in the prison in order to draw attention to those internal dynamics of subjugation that risk 'spoiling' and negatively contaminating the virtuous encounter between 'inside' and 'outside'.

In contemporary discourse surrounding prisons, the focus on institutional analysis has often overshadowed the voices and experiences of those within the system— the institutionalized individuals. For this reason, methodological precautions must be taken to this end, ensuring that education itself does not perpetuate existing power dynamics and institutional violence (Freire, 2018;).

Guiding remarks will outline the theoretical angle in which the proposed analysis aims to be situated: while the transmission model of education inherently perpetuates permanent infantilization and the normed and violent production of docile and useful individuals— typical, as mentioned, of a prevalent understanding of education as a rehabilitative mean within total institutions—the proposed experiences, in their unique manifestations, represent possibilities for deterritorialization and the transformation of educational practice itself. In particular, they anticipate a shift from the model of banking education to a problematising educational approach that aims to challenge rather than replicate power structures of knowledge in their concealed reifying and marginalising functions (Freire, 1974; Illich, 2019;).

Amidst this landscape, Convict Criminology emerges as a pivotal force in reshaping Higher Education within prison environments. This approach, championed by both incarcerated and formerly incarcerated individuals, transcends traditional research paradigms by fostering collaboration between academics and prisoners as co-producers of knowledge (Darke and Aresti, 2016). By dismantling the traditional dichotomy between researcher and participant, Convict Criminology empowers institutionalized individuals to actively engage in the production of academic research that directly pertains to their experiences and aspirations for systemic reform.