Education within Juvenile Justice: Throwing the Digital Baby Out with the Bath water

• In Event: Explorations of Educational Reforms and Tools for School Improvement

Proposal

There is no doubt that digital technology has become an integral part of education across the world. It has become a tool to increase access to education provision, an information highway, creating connectivity, digitised the use of education tools, but in addition to this digital technology is becoming an increasing player in education itself through the development of generative tools such as AI (Selwyn, 2021). Combined, these take us into a new digital era where technology is not just an assistive tool but is an integrative and generative facility that takes education as we know it into a new place (Kamalov et al, 2023). This requires considerable engagement, adjustment and indeed a new way of thinking which can take humankind into a completely new age. It is both uncertain and exciting.

However, this digital revolution has also brought with it a digital divide exacerbating already entrenched inequalities and even creating deeper ones. Education has long been cited as a means of transforming lives (Carstensen and Emmenegger, 2023) but also a means of perpetuating inequalities (Wood et al, 2023). An often unexplored area is that of education for children who come into conflict with the law in their lands and are incarcerated. There are estimates that over a million children worldwide are incarcerated (UNICEF, 2021) but under the UNCRC, Article 28 all children have a ‘right to education no matter who they are: regardless of race, gender or disability; if they’re in detention, or if they’re a refugee’. Prisons or secure custodial settings by their very nature is about an enclosed and closed space, where the deprivation of liberty tends to include the deprivation of facilities, amenities and other ‘privileges’ (O’Donnell, 2020) and the internet of digital availability is often perceived as one such privilege. Given that digital technology has become an integral part of education and learning all over the world, this poses significant problems for secure settings for children and young people who on the one hand are entitled to education and learning but on the other hand denied or limited in the sort of digital provision that is the norm in mainstream education in many parts of the world.

This situation is especially problematic because children and young people who are incarcerated already have negative experiences of education and many have dropped out of school well before they are incarcerated (Cripps et al, 2012; Author et al, 2020). In Western countries this is usually because they have become disengaged with learning and more often than not have additional learning needs which remain unmet. For example, over 23% of children in custodial settings have learning difficulties compared with 2-3% in the general school populations (Hughes et al, 2018). In other countries across the world, incarcerated children often drop out of school for economic reasons where school is either unaffordable, inaccessible or there is a need to support the family.

Therefore in some ways these children have also missed out on digital literacy opportunities that are available within mainstream school and educational settings. Denying them the opportunity whilst incarcerated is a double-disadvantage. This is significant given that digital technology and digital literacy is required just to complete the simplistic of actions in modern society, for example an application form for employment or even opening a bank account or making purchases requires digital access and some level of digital literacy (Facer & Selwin, 2021).
While some countries have developed digital technology provision and access to education for children within youth/juvenile justice settings, there is still considerable tension on how to navigate the tensions of the rights of children with the secure estate facilities as well as political palatability (Knight, 2021). It thus becomes even more imperative that children who are incarcerated have the opportunity for access to digital learning so that they can not only catch up with what they may have missed in school, but also learn about how to use digital technology for learning purposes and other life skills. This can contribute to reducing reoffending rates. However, this is an area that is yet to attract the research attention it requires and much of the research is focused on adult prisons (Knight, 2024).

This presentation will discuss some of the tensions and challenges of enabling digital literacy within the secure estate without compromising security. This includes the issues of enabling a digital environment. Many prison buildings are old and it is not easy to install the necessary hardware nor are there resources for this considerable infrastructure updating. There is also the resource implication of equipment and devices. The challenges of security is also a key issue and requires continual monitoring and assessment to ensure ‘whitelisting’ of permitted sites. More broadly, is the societal perspective that the internet is a privilege which should not be afforded to offenders and this requires some political manoeuvring and ‘justification’ (Knight, 2021). However denying children and young people the opportunities to learn means that as a society we contribute to perpetuating offending as obtaining meaningful employment or engaging in society becomes out of their grasp even further. It is absolutely essential that youth justice and ministries of justice consider not just the implications of enabling digital technology within prisons, but importantly consider the implications of not doing so which could have far reaching ramifications for the lives of those who offend. This presentation aims to put a spotlight on this important area of work.

Author

• Adeela ahmed Shafi, University of Gloucestershire