“Education makes the impossible possible” says David Breakspear, ex-prisoner and active prison reform campaigner. At the SkillHUBS final conference David shared his story about the revolving door of the criminal justice system. During his journey he discovered the power of education and how learning opportunities can be life-changing for inmates.
Breakspear’s keynote inspired an enriching discussion, including an elaboration on the challenges that you can experience while studying in prison and the importance of affordabable education for people from all backgrounds and strokes of life. The participants were also reminded on how education empowers people to make their own decisions through learning new skill sets and taking charge of their own lives. Having access to education therefore provides perspective and leads to a lower number of reoffending cases.
The final conference was also an occasion to get inspired by the SkillHUBS tools and methodologies. Participants heard of a co-creative approach to teaching basic and transversal skills in prison and the results of a pilot carried out in three partner countries. Implementing the model in different countries is proving to be a challenge due to different local regulations but worth the effort.
For this reason, the consortium drafted straight-forward and inspiring policy recommendations, which were presented by Dr. Lesley Crane at the final conference. The recommendations target policy makers and policy influencers in organisations which have interest in prison education, administration, or legislation across the EU. The recommendations address the problems of the current education system in prisons, such as the level of education of the inmates, the lack of awareness on the importance of education in this context and the limitations of prisoners to access digital technologies.
SkillHUBS opens the door to an improvement of the prison education in Europe and leads the way to the development of more efficient tools for skills assessment and tailor-made learning opportunities for inmates.
Background
The SkillHUBS developed a transnational counselling and training model for inmates and presented policy recommendations to introduce the model into national prison education systems across Europe. The final conference was held online 6th of October 2020 and was organised by EAEA in cooperation with the Learning and Work Institute and the International Corrections and Prisons Association.
SkillHUBS policy recommendations and other outputs of the project
Watch the SkillHUBS final conference
Contact information / EAEA
Francesca Operti
Project Manager
francesca.operti@eaea.org
Contact information / Centre for Education and Culture Trebnje (CIK)
Sabina Tori Selan
Head of Non-Formal Education
sabina.tori-selan@ciktrebnje.si