Conference Program

In recent years, several national contexts have witnessed a weakening of the rehabilitative function of prison and a rise in penal populism, which has gradually led to the marginalisation of prison education. Carceral spaces are commonly understood as disciplinary spaces (Foucault, 1975), where incarcerated individuals are subjected to processes of identity degradation (Goffman, 1961) and prisonization (Clemmer, 1940), through which they may gradually lose their previous defining traits and internalise the identity of “the prisoner”. However, prison education can transform carceral settings into “porous institutions” (Ellis, 2021), allowing alternative perspectives to contaminate prison culture and enabling incarcerated individuals to reconstruct their sense of self and reinterpret their detention experiences. In this sense, prison education sits at the intersection of disciplinary control and democratic aspirations, operating within carceral logics while partially interrupting their totalising effects.

Prison education creates counter-hegemonic spaces, enabling incarcerated individuals to expand their horizons and cultivate alternative identities and critical self-perceptions (Acocella & Pastore, 2020; Borghini & Pastore, 2024). Drawing on ethnographic research conducted in a high-security prison in Tuscany between 2023 and 2024, this paper examines the impact of participating in higher education programs on family bonds, particularly those of children of school age. Data collected through 10 in-depth interviews with detainees and ethnographic field observation show that attending university enables incarcerated persons to reflect on their lives and acquire a deeper understanding of themselves, rediscovering the importance of education for themselves and their children. University spaces within the prison appear to function as sites of re-subjectification, generating hybrid forms of identities that intersect the roles of inmate, student, father and educator. Prison education can therefore restore symbolic legitimacy to incarcerated fathers, whose roles as educators and parents gain renewed strength through pursuing a university degree. Incarcerated individuals can see themselves as competent figures, capable of guiding and supporting their children throughout their educational paths and offering advice when needed. Prison education, therefore, can help to bridge the gap between fathers and children and reconceptualise the connections between the prison system, the education system, and the families involved (Cataldi & Cataldi, 2024). From this perspective, prison education can be seen as a key element in challenging the logics of penitentiary spaces and opening micro-spaces of democracy within them, where not only the right to study is upheld, but also the right to develop fully as human beings.

At the same time, prison education is often shaped by rehabilitative and managerial rhetorics, where university participation is often framed as a marker of compliance or risk management. This ambivalence reveals the contradictory context in which education operates within prisons, positioned between governance and democratic aspiration. Within this negotiated space, adopting the role of student and engaging in knowledge production can facilitate significant processes of change, enabling incarcerated fathers to envision identities beyond those defined by incarceration.