What Is to Be Done? Prison Education Between Bureaucratic Marketing and Decarceral Potential

• In Event: Critical Criminology 4: Critical Perspectives on Crime and Criminalisation

Abstract

Mass incarceration remains entrenched despite decades of critique and reform efforts. Prison education has emerged as a contested space, oscillating between its potential to reinforce carceral logic and its capacity to foster genuine pathways toward decarceration. This presentation examines global prison education initiatives that challenge the dominant punitive framework, exploring how pedagogical models rooted in empowerment, community engagement, and critical consciousness can actively contribute to dismantling incarceration.
Drawing on comparative research across diverse contexts—including Brazil’s “prison without police” APAC model, Norway’s Bastøy prison, the University of Buenos Aires’ prison education initiative, and Italy’s Bollate prison—this analysis highlights how alternative approaches to prison education can serve as catalysts for structural transformation. While operating within carceral settings, these programs demonstrate that education can cultivate agency, solidarity, and reintegration by resisting the bureaucratic logic of control and neutralization. The discussion also engages with theorizations of generative justice, abolitionist pedagogy, and transformative education to assess the extent to which these models can be scaled or adapted to other contexts.
Rather than treating education as a tool for managing incarcerated populations, this presentation argues for its potential as a decarceral force—one that challenges the inevitability of prison and envisions new forms of justice. It calls on scholars, educators, and policymakers to critically engage with global best practices that move beyond reformism and toward a radically different future—one where education is not a supplement to incarceration but an alternative.

Author

• Sergio Grossi, John Jay College (City University of New York) - Institut des sciences juridique et philosophique de la Sorbonne (Paris 1)