Prison education

It is rather surprising that many people do not even know that the Corradino Correctional Facility has its own Education Unit. Inaugurated in 1997, the unit aims to provide inmates with the possibility of passing the time spent behind bars in a worthwhile manner that will be beneficial to them both when they are still serving time and, later, when the majority are re-integrated within society.

The importance of correctional education cannot be over-stressed when one faces the fact that it costs the state the staggering sum of Lm26.54 per inmate daily or Lm9,687.10 per inmate yearly.

How crucial education is in the fight against crime is again highlighted by the fact that the majority of Maltese citizens who finish behind bars are people who leave school without obtaining at least one certificate to show when presenting themselves for employment. In fact, from data I gathered two years ago with regard to the qualifications of a sample of 264 Maltese inmates, it results that 92 per cent left school with no credentials whatsoever. This, obviously, makes it very easy for such individuals to lapse into a life of crime since the vast majority of employment opportunities are closed to them.

Do inmates cooperate in their rehabilitation through education, readers will ask. The average number of inmates who participate in educational programmes usually amounts to about one third of the prison population. For example, this November, at a time when the total prison population amounted to 385, 127 inmates were participating in educational programmes. Since 1997, 25 inmates have obtained secondary education certificates, 12 have been successful at A level standard, two are attending university and one has even graduated. About 150 inmates have also acquired functional literacy skills which they lacked upon being admitted to the Corradino Correctional Facility. A problem that threatens the future of education at the Corradino Correctional Facility, however, is that of misguided outside interference in the work of the educators in the field. It is unfortunate that there are still people who have minimal contact with what goes on within the Corradino Correctional Facility and who think they can come to the facility with ready-made programmes of action to be hoisted onto the professionals who work there to carry out as if the latter lacked the expertise to devise such programmes themselves as based on actual field experiences.

A case in point is a project of the so-called European Prison Education Association, an international non-governmental organisation (NGO) having close ties with the University of Malta's Faculty of Education through the latter's Programme For Education In Prisons.

I was surprised to read in the EPEA website that the NGO has initiated an EU-sponsored project entitled Developing Training Programmes For Qualified Teachers To Teach In Prisons and that the project is being coordinated by the University of Malta.

What is incredible about all this is the fact that the main reason for initiating the project is based on false premises where Malta is concerned. In fact, the EPEA website states that "teaching in prisons follows the methodology applied in primary schools and teachers are recruited to teach in prisons straight off the primary and secondary schools. This project seeks to rectify this situation".

This statement is absolutely false in the case of Malta where the prison educational staff follow adult education methodology and where the coordinator is an adult education specialist.

If education at the Corradino Correctional Facility is to improve, we have to get our priorities right. Our targets should be: The training of correctional officers in social skills needed when interacting with inmates; the development and increase in provision of vocational education; the development of career-progression structures for prison educators in order to attract the best educators to teach in prison; the total involvement of the Corradino Correctional Facility educators in the Faculty of Education's Programme For Education In Prisons; absolute cooperation between the political parties in the fight against crime, which is a matter of national security and too important to reduce to the level of petty political controversy.

Education reduces crime and a reduction in crime means that substantial amounts of money can be used by the state elsewhere, with beneficial results for you, for me, and for every citizen.