Facilitating Education in Prisons

Abstract

Education can effectively reduce prisoners in reoffending, equip them the necessary skills and knowledge to earn their livings. As educational backgrounds of the prisoners vary a lot even they are roughly of the same ages, traditional classroom teaching is not appropriate. On the other hand, distance learning provides students higher flexibility and more choices in organizing the learning paths. Students taking courses in distance learning approach need to read study units and reference materials, such as textbooks and reference books and papers. For usual students, the resources can either accessed via the Internet or at the library in person. However, for prisoners, due to highly restrictive measures in material exchange into and out of the prisons, they are not allowed to access the Internet directly and all materials dispatched must be verified. This paper discusses requirements of prison educations and a framework for facilitating prisoners in taking distance learning.