Education and confinement: The construction of a student identity in prisons of La Pampa

Abstract

This article demonstrates the way in which a person deprived of liberty goes through a process of construction of student identity in a scenario of tensions where educational proposals are implemented in contexts of punitive confinement. This tension emerges from the different logics of operation of each of the institutions involved, the school and the prison. The actions that intervene in this process, either promoting or interrupting it, are also described in the context of the article. On the one hand, it can be suggested that the context of punitive confinement reinforces the prisoner identity and depersonalizes the subjects, stripping them of their capacity for reasoning and freedom of expression to turn them into subjects incapable of choosing, feeling, and projecting. On the other hand, the state school guarantees these people’s right to education offering them opportunities of emancipation and empowerment and repositioning them politically, culturally, and socially. In other words, state education in punitive confinement seeks to contribute to social justice through dignifying the lives of those deprived of liberty.