Anthony Bosco Ororho
(Photo shows prisoners sleeping in ‘Bundles’ in Nigerian prisons)
“Our business in life is not to get ahead of others but to get ahead of ourselves–to break our own records, to outstrip our yesterdays by our today, to do our work with more force than ever before.”
…forbes
Prison is a correctional facility and not a punishment yard where offenders go to suffer for their crimes. In any society, there is bound to be law breakers and offenders. However, basic education principles in modern times, frown at punishment as a corrective measure. Rather, new theories of education support negative reward as a correctional measure for offenders.
Prison education, also known as Inmate Education and Correctional Education, is a broad term that encompasses any number of educational activities occurring inside a prison. These educational activities include both vocational training and academic education.
Education is training! In primordial times, parents and guardians used the apprenticeship type of schooling to train their children and wards on specific skills. Thus, a farmer’s son readily became a farmer while a tinker’s son equally became a tinker. Therefore, the farmers provided food, the tinkers, pots and pans to cook the food while cobblers made sandals, bags and other leather works.
The scenario painted above, is one of a group of self-sufficient communities that made up a typical African society. Back then, offenders may be banished or sold into slavery to serve as deterrent to others. But with the introduction of Western civilisation, prisons, sometimes called penitentiaries were built to cater for law breakers. But because of the African idiosyncrasies, an ex-convict is viewed with suspicion and treated like an outcaste; this is largely due to the fact that the African society places very high premium on the caste system.
But in other climes, prisoners have rights that are catered for by Government. One of such rights is the right to a good and qualitative education. This is informed by the fact that these prisoners are, and, still remain citizens of their respective countries. Therefore, they are entitled to every fundamental human right as encompassed in the United Nations Charter on Fundamental Human Rights.
“Although prisoners do not have full Constitutional rights, they are protected by the Constitution’s prohibition of cruel and unusual punishment. This protection requires that prisoners be afforded a minimum standard of living. Prisoners retain some other Constitutional rights, including due process in their right to administrative appeals and a right of access to the parole process. The Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment has been held to apply to prison inmates” in the United States. (Source, Internet).
Be that as it may, a developing economy like Nigeria cannot overlook the importance of schooling its entire populace, prisoners inclusive. Especially is this treatise apt when viewed from the perspective of an emerging world economy like Nigeria. Again, the writer would want the reader to recall that majority of prison inmates are individuals with very high Intelligence Quotient (IQ) but with little or no access to a good education.
In support of the above assumption, let us look at the case of the Almajiri in Nigeria. These are homeless youths in the northern part of the country who occupy the lowest wrung of the social ladder. For decades after independence, successive Governments ignored this class of Nigerians until, they became the foot soldiers of politicians who wanted power at all cost. The case of insurgency in that part of Nigeria today and its attendant losses is one cost too high to pay for our collective negligence.
The only remedy as propounded by the Goodluck Jonathan Administration, was access to good education. As we all know, “knowledge is power” and “light is life.” An educated man is thus classified as a functional or useful citizen but the man who does not read is compared with the blind illiterate. The difference between the blind man and the blind illiterate is that the educated blind man can read and write while the situation of the blind illiterate can best be described as hopeless because the key to success is hidden in the pages of books.
It becomes imperative therefore, for Government, corporate citizens, individuals and of course, non-governmental organisations (NGO’s) to provide education for prison inmates, so that after doing time in prison, they can contribute to the socio-political economy in a positive way.
According to African Research Review, “Offenders released from correctional institutions are confronted by social, economic and personal challenges that tend to become obstacles to a crime-free lifestyle.” In line with this mind set, it will be right to think that prisoners need to be educated and provided with certain vocational skills that will prepare them to take their place in society.
How then, will prison education benefit a developing economy like Nigeria?
RE-BRANDING OF THE INDIVIDUAL:
Omoni and Ijeh, in their essay, “Qualitative Education for Prisoners: A Panacea for Effective Rehabilitation and Integration into the Society,” posit that prison education “…is the education given to prisoners to enable them leave the prison with more skills and be in a position to find meaningful and long term employment (Rhode, 2004).
Educationists the world over hold that a form of behaviour that has been learnt can equally be unlearned. All that the learners need is the opportunity and necessary tools to unlearn the negative behaviour, replacing it with another form of behaviour that is positive.
Ayu (2004) reasons that “The prison must be a centre for information and not for punishment. The primary task of prison education is to increase the chances of employment by ex-offenders and hence reduce recidivism.” Recidivism means re-offending or committing the same offence for which one was jailed earlier.
In most African societies, jail birds abound; jail birds are criminals who cannot live outside prison walls. There is this story of a jail bird who told the prison official who effected his release from prison to keep his prison uniform for him because he will soon return to prison and would need it. No doubt, such an individual has no life skills and no desire to acquire one. Therefore, prison to him is a place to rest from the demand of living a fruitful life. Why work when there is a home for the homeless and food for the hungry, provided for, by tax payers’ money.
EFFECTIVE COMMUNITY RE-ENTRY:
This is another reason prison education cannot be overlooked. A prisoner, whether on parole or having served his Jail term has to return to the community where he once lived and live with the same people he once offended. Whether he fits in or finds himself a misfit will depend largely on the society’s prison education system.
For example, a soldier needs some form of education both physical and psychological to enable him fit into civil society otherwise, he will continue to use the military mentality in a civil society and will definitely be a misfit. Have you seen some ex-soldiers driving on Nigeria streets? They keep a horse whip otherwise called koboko on the car dash board to tell other road users, “Here comes a soldier boy. Bloody civilian, keep clear or taste the agony from my whip.”
Same is true of the ex-convict! He is ready to scare the living daylight out of you just to show that he has been there. But a good re-entry programme will ensure that soldier and ex-convict return to civil society as law abiding civilians.
SKILLS ACQUISITION:
The provision of a good prison education will mean more skilful and functional citizens to oil the Nigerian economy. In recent times, a few prisoners have had access to good education while serving a jail term and a pocketful gained admission to the National Open University of Nigeria (NOUN), last Academic Session. Others have had some form of vocational training like welding, masonry, fashion and designing, leather works etc. these ex-convicts later become entrepreneurs and employers of labour who provide food for other families as well as income for themselves and the society at large.
Logic and statistics has proven that Rehabilitation is more effective than Retribution. People leaving incarceration face a wide range of challenges. Through a variety of services, like Education, Employment Counselling, Vocational Training, Mentoring Classes, Life Skills and more, these individuals are helped to start new, healthy lives, significantly reducing recidivism, thus making society a safer place for all.
CIVIC RESPONSIBILITY:
That an educated man or woman is easier to govern, is not in doubt anymore. This is because s/he can read and understand Government policies and the rationale behind setting up of related programmes. Such citizens find it easier too, to obey rules and regulations, pay their taxes and contribute their quota to national development.
If we refuse to train those in prison we will find it difficult to keep them under control when they come out of prison. Suchlike ones will not hesitate to snatch ballot boxes during elections, shoot at their opponents and cause mayhem for a few naira bills. Then, the society suffers the setback.
SECURITY:
We build houses and construct two metre high fences around them, thereby, turning our homes into prison yards. So, we end up trading our freedom for ignorance. It is a well-known fact that when you educate and empower people, you reduce crime rate in the community or society.
PRODUCTS CREATION:
Vocational education is the bedrock of development in any given society because it produces blue collar workers who work in the factories and create products that help improve our standard of living. For example, offshore oil and gas workers are mostly holders of vocational certificates, underwater welders are in very high demand in the oil and gas industry, fabricators, refrigerator mechanics, automobile mechanics and engineers, plumbers e.t.c. play a very important role in our economic life.
The following information is culled from College Behind Bars: How Educating Prisoners Pays Off:
The stakes are high, and not just for the inmates. A studyof Missouri’s prisoners showed that re-incarceration rates “were nearly cut in half for former inmates with a full-time job compared to similar inmates who are unemployed.”
Every inmate who leaves the system saves that state an average of $25,000 per year. Nationwide, more than 650,000 people were released from state prisons in 2010. By cutting the re-incarceration rate in half, $2.7 billion per year could be saved.
Former inmates with jobs also have less need for public assistance and contribute to society, in the form of taxes and purchasing power.
The Missouri study also shows that inmates’ chances of finding full-time employment are greatly enhanced if they complete an education in prison. A 2005 analysisof 15 other such studies found that, on average, re-incarceration rates for participants in prison education programs were 46 percent lower than for non-participants.
Between 1972 and 1995 inmates who were not sentenced to death or life without parole could apply for Pell Grants and state funds such as New York’s Tuition Assistance Program to help offset the cost of prison education. Early in the 1990s there were 350 post-secondary prison programs in 37 states. But inmate eligibility was withdrawn in the get-tough-on-crime decade. By 2005, only a dozen prisons had postsecondary programs, most of them a patchwork of volunteer efforts by individual colleges and universities.
Two of those prisons are served by the Cornell Prison education Program. CPEP sends Cornell faculty and students to Auburn Correctional Facility, a maximum-security prison, and the medium-security Cayuga Correctional Facility. (There are no women’s prisons near Ithaca.) The program is the culmination of work begun by English professor Winthrop “Pete” Wetherbee who, without funding, began teaching in the Auburn prison in the mid-1990s.
In 1999 the program began offering Cornell credit for completed courses. In 2008 Cornell made an agreement with Cayuga Community College (CCC): Cornell waives tuition and fees; CPEP supplies instructors and pays for books, school supplies and the program’s administration; and CCC grants associate degrees.
Today CPEP offers for-credit courses to nearly 100 men per year at Auburn and Cayuga Correctional Facility, on subjects ranging from genetics and poetry to economics and medical anthropology. In a typical semester, about a dozen Cornell faculty members and graduate students make the two hour round trip to teach the courses, aided by 40-50 undergraduate teaching assistants. All but the graduate students, who receive a small stipend, teach voluntarily.
When visiting the program, we found students hungry for an education and grateful for their efforts. “These men are quite extraordinary,” said Richard Polenberg, a Cornell emeritus professor and award-winning teacher who taught a constitutional history course at Auburn. “They are very, very well behaved in the classroom and they ask really good questions.”
Can we burrow a leaf from the United States Prison Reform Programme? Borrowing won’t hurt anyone this time around.
*Anthony Ororho is a School Administrator cum Education Consultant.
Afro-Global Education Deliveries 