The GAP Project of the Simua-Museum System of the University of Palermo is an Erasmus+ partnership with Kunsthistorisches Institut in Florenz – Max-Planck- Institut, the Dems of the University of Palermo, University of Zaragoza and Abadir, Catania, with the patronage of the Ministry of Justice, DAP-Department of Penitentiary Administration and the Ministry of Culture. The GAP project relates one of the most important cultural sites in Sicily, the Steri Prisons of the Inquisition in Palermo, and its palimpsest of writings and drawings painted on the walls, with the artistic expressions in today’s prisons, proposing a new training and educational path that combines scientific research, educational and artistic activities and social commitment.

The GAP Project has gathered four female visual artists, a writer and three correctional institutions in Palermo. The project’s impact was not to be evaluated in terms of its products, but on the nature of the connections forged between inmates and doctoral students, between educators and cultural mediators, between university and prison: contexts only apparently distant. Stepping outside of established convention, these players have found ample common ground through contemporary art. By merit of a dialogic approach and the building of horizontal relationships, all the project’s participants have contributed to its actions; themselves conceived in favour of collectivity and a spirit of co-ownership. The GAP Project experimented the conditions for ethical collective growth, contributing significantly to communities’ social and cultural development. This pact of cooperation concretely enshrines the university’s active role as a socialization agency at the service not only of the university population but of society as a whole.

Matilde Cassani’s workshop at Ucciardone Prison took place mainly in the prison yard. With the prison director’s support, the artist thus proposed a collective action to bathe the ‘grey courtyard’ into a football field of soft desert colours. Artist Elisa Giardina Papa, aided by prof. Giovanna Fiume, conducted a series of workshops at the Malaspina Juvenile Detention Centre. The workshops’ various creations included a t-shirt stamped front and back with the words ‘innocent or guilty’, conveying the deep inner turmoil of one young participant: a conflicted state that has, however, found expression through creativity and the language of art. At Pagliarelli prison, Stefania Galegati coordinated the project The School of Competencies, exchanging of roles and the weaving of horizontal relationships between female inmates and doctoral students. The two prisons of Pagliarelli and Ucciardone have been photographed by Giovanna Silva, who captured corners of ordinary environments, everyday objects, residues of domestic life in places by nature inhospitable: all tell of life ‘inside’. The writer Giorgio Vasta has tailored a work to the prisons. The Steri’s graffiti and drawings were executed with brick dust scraped from the floor, the lampblack of candles and naturally-occurring pigments, all mixed with the bodily fluids of the inscriptions’ prisoner-authors. Those individuals’ DNA is embedded in the surface of the Steri’s walls. He wrote the story of these ‘bodies in the wall’ via a sound walk through the cells, summoning and revitalising their three-hundred-year-old memories of imprisonment.

This paper delves into the critical intersection of literacy education, human rights, and the prison environment, examining the multifaceted challenges and opportunities in providing literacy courses to inmates. Since its inception in 1946, UNESCO has consistently prioritized universal literacy, underling its relevance later with the Belém Framework and Hamburg Declaration (Wagner, 2013) to emphasise its indispensable role in personal, socio-economic, and political empowerment. However, the focus shifts to the unique context of prison education, particularly for immigrants arriving in Italy without foundational literacy skills, exacerbating their vulnerability upon release (Marcus, 1986). The transformative value of prison education is underscored, offering concrete examples of inclusion, and preparing individuals for successful reintegration into society (Tucciarone, 2020)

Empirical evidence supports the positive impact of educational paths on behaviour within correctional settings and reducing recidivism rates (Vacca, James, 2004). Nevertheless, the staggering number of illiterate and unidentified education levels among inmates in Italy, as evidenced by DAP data, poses challenges. Almost 50% of the total prison population remains excluded from educational programs, giving rise to the concept of "invisible illiterates" (Boev, 2020). Drawing from the author's experience in penal institutes in Padua, the paper conducts a literature review (Ghirotto, 2020) to critically analyse challenges and opportunities for engaging inmates in literacy courses.

The first section identifies barriers hindering inmate participation, including feelings of shame, embarrassment, low self-esteem, and a lack of confidence (Kett, 2001). Cultural resistance (Schumann, 1978) and the impact of dynamic security (Tucciarone, 2020) further complicate motivation for linguistic courses. The prison setting intensifies these barriers, emphasizing the need to preserve one's image in a narrow social community (Assenzio, 2020).

The second section explores strategies to overcome these challenges, starting by making the name of the courses less stigmatizing (Tucciarone, 2020) and emphasizing the creation of a supportive learning environment that reduces the affective filter (Krashen, 1982). This allows inmates to feel comfortable enough to expose themselves to error, which is a necessary element in language acquisition (Corder, 1967). Moreover, the andragogical approach (Knowles, 1997) values inmates as adult learners, fostering reciprocal respect and providing space for cultural and linguistic expression, enhancing their previous knowledge (Lorenzoni, Martinelli, 1999). Stimulating activities, aligned with the comprehensible-input hypothesis (Krashen, 1982) and the ludo-linguistic approach (Begotti, 2010), contribute to a balanced focus both on group dynamics and task-oriented activities (Assenzio, 2020). Integration of ICT with literacy programs emerges as a successful strategy to enhance engagement and meaningful learning experiences (Kett, 2001; Vryonides, Marios et al., 2014; Tucciarone, 2020). Adopting the “I care” pedagogy (Scuola Di Barbiana, 1967) and establishing effective relationships between teachers and inmates can be identified as the cornerstone of a successful approach, which is the most relevant reward for teachers, giving value to their efforts (Shethar, 1993).

In conclusion, this comprehensive exploration tries to shed light on the intricate landscape of literacy education within the prison system, offering some insights into the challenges faced by teachers and presenting a possible roadmap for developing effective strategies that promote inclusivity and empowerment among inmates.

Higher education in prison is an experience that originated in the late 1960s in Europe (Behan, 2021), including Italy (Friso and Decembrotto, 2018), and is increasingly widespread. It may be a powerful instrument from several perspectives. We propose two.

Firstly, equity. University experiences in prison guarantee access to the right to study, a universal right (Article 26, UDHR) concerning access to the same level of educational opportunities available to adults in the wider society (Farley and Pike, 2018), including academic one. This opens up several challenges concerning the accessibility of education in prison, often focused on adult basic education, its quality, and compromises with prison logic. In prison, education tended not to be a priority (Behan, 2021), perhaps also because of the difficult reconciliation between rights, punishment, and the idea of accessibility based on “merit”. In fact, it is extremely complex to reconcile the overriding retributive purpose of prisons with the purpose of education as human development (Cosman, 1995). Furthermore, “merit” is considered inequitable (UNESCO IESALC, 2023) as it gives little consideration to the quality of education available to people, especially those from disadvantaged backgrounds.

Secondly, democratisation. Education should be directed at the full development of the human personality, also aimed at strengthening respect for human rights. However, this is not just an individual experience and does not only concern having access to the highest quality professional learning. By ensuring accessibility and reformulating inclusion and widening participation strategies, we are also redefining the university experience itself. Providing access to those who, for various reasons, would have been excluded is crucial. It facilitates encounters between people who, in all likelihood, would never have crossed paths. This dynamic extends to both restricted and free students, as well as tutors and academics. They do not necessarily play predetermined roles and such interactions can give rise to new representations of universities and of communities. This can happen, for example, in the co-production of knowledge (Darke and Aresti, 2016). Paulo Freire’s Pedagogy of the Oppressed (2011) and bell hooks’ reflections (1998) offer an interesting framework. She introduces Freire’s insights into the university setting through an intersectional perspective. With hooks, the margin is transformed into more than just a place of deprivation; it becomes “a space of radical openness”, a concept shared by some South American experiences of university in prison (Bustelo and Decembrotto, 2020).

The transformative potential of higher education in prison is recognized by academic theories and incarcerated students also (Darke and Aresti, 2016). Some authors discuss the “reducing the damage” effect, highlighting how the university experience facilitates the development of new horizons and helps individuals distance themselves from the more damaging effects of prison (Farley and Pike, 2018). This recognition originates from the fact that transformative potential is not imposed, not heterodirected, not disciplining. Instead, it is based on critical thinking, dialogue, collaborative engagement, and the acknowledgment of non-stigmatizing roles.

Paraphrasing Franco Prina (2011, p. 63), visibility is the first criterion that guides the selection of problematic situations and behaviors in school. Within the school context, behaviors that are divergent or do not conform to the regular functioning of the school organization are immediately visible: they interfere with and stand out from a material background and its usual way of functioning (Tolomelli, 2022). In order to continue in the smooth running of school activities, it becomes necessary for the organization and its representatives to deal with that behavior. If the behavior recurs and treatment through practices and tools wholly internal to the school proves ineffective in preventing its recurrence, the institutional procedure convenes and entrusts external and specialized knowledge with the mandate to investigate the deeper reasons for that behavior. The material background acts as a selector: it indicates an anomaly and an irregularity of behavior and delegates its "treatment" to the knowledge of professionals who seek its cause in the internal functioning of the subject (Foucault, 2000, Barone 2001). This delegation procedure doubles the irregularity, which moves from act to conduct, from behavior to mode of being (Foucault, 2000, pp. 24-25): the shift from the infraction of the norm as a regularity of conduct to the individual personality trait is made possible by recourse to psychological, neuropsychiatric and social knowledge that describes the subject and constitutes it as irregular with respect to physiological, psychological or moral dimensions all welded into a single point: the diagnosis, which creates the individual and transforms him or her into a "case" (Barone 2019). By showing the similarity between the individual (his functional irregularity, his emotional fragility, his social problematicity) and his "irregular act" (Foucault, 2000, pp. 27-28), the character of the irregular takes shape as a truth: a truth about the subject that identifies him as sick and noncompliant. Such a truth fits perfectly into the school organization since, by identifying an unambiguous element on which to intervene with external knowledge and professionalism (educators, school psychologists, mediators..), it allows the school not to question its own structure and functioning. This confirms and guarantees the correctness and regularity of school activities, turning the educational context into "naked empiricity" (Massa in Rezzara, 2004, p. 153): inert and invisible matter and background (Landri, Viteritti, 2016). Such invisibility of context makes the social visibility of divergent behavior a sign of deviant pathological individuality. On the contrary, it is necessary to take a pedagogical perspective that looks at and acts on the dispositif that shapes the educational contexts experienced by subjects. This would make it possible to put the role of school form and functioning in creating deviance back at the center of analysis. Indeed, representations and treatment of deviant behavior are profoundly influenced by the school understood as a material, organizational, symbolic and affective structure: it is this that must be looked at and changed (Massa, 1997, Barone 2013).

Currently only 4.2% of the Italian prison population is detained in female prisons, for a total of about two thousand four hundred people last year. This data denotes not only the lack of attention to the population restrained in female sections, but also how difficult is to access to all forms of activity and sociability, that the male held population tends to be able to take advantage of instead, mainly due to their numerical presence.

Women in prisons are not considered as valuable as men are, by two main reasons: on one hand, it is relevant to notice that the type of crime they have committed (that is mostly against property) is not as interesting as it may be organized crime, pedophilia or murders, that are mostly committed by men and are much more relevant for media’s narrative; on the other hand, users in female prisons are numerically so few that for penitentiary organization it is not worth to spend resources and money to bring activities into female sections. In fact, this mechanism affects enormously the access to education for female prisoners: there is a lack of spaces to studies, schools, experts and volunteers. This crucial problem reflects what is female condition in prison like: it is thought that women should not think about university or studying in general, but only worry about working or children, or even allow the pain from their families’ abandonment be totalizing.

The aim of the work is to present the Italian situation in terms of female detention and the access to education, showing the crisis inside female sections and its declension by numbers and experiences.