Communication Media and Digital Literacy as Intervention Tools in Prisons

In Spain, there are a few projects that link communication with social intervention in prisons. These projects have remained invisible to society, and similar initiatives taking place in other prisons were even unknown amongst themselves. It is not common to find radio, programs of digital literacy, magazines, or even television and cinema in prisons. These are activities that remain within the walls and come about from the restlessness of the educators who voluntarily produce them. The work presented comes about the doctoral research work that for 4 years explored these initiatives. Through qualitative methodology, based on the use of in-depth interviews, the authors give voice to 20 prisoners and educators that participate in these projects in Spanish jails. Without claiming to be representative, the results show that these activities can become a powerful tool for social-educative integration and personal transformation.

Restricted Communication

The aim of this research is to point out the patterns of media use of an inmate before the incarceration and the communication habits, as well as the compulsorily restricted media use during imprisonment. The purpose is to get insight of how the prisoners deal with the change of their situation and the subsequent use of traditional media such as letters and phone calls in order to keep in touch with their family and other social contacts. Deriving from the media repertoire approach, the research question is focused on the media use before and during imprisonment, which should clarify the change of patterns. In order to conduct a detailed exploration of a media repertoire on the personal level, the data collection has been conducted through semi-structured in-depth interviews with female prisoners from the German female prison TAF (Teilanstalt für Frauen) at the JVA Billwerder.

Research on Information Literacy and Social Inclusion of Female Inmates

Information literacy in prisons is still an incipient issue for the scientific community, as evidenced by the absence of studies on information literacy activities in prisons. There are hardly any specific training programs for the acquisition of informational competences in Spanish prisons. They are presented results of research that have been aimed at creating a theoretical-application model of training in informational and digital skills for people in prison. The project had a methodological approach based on action research. The digital divide makes it difficult to integrate people into the labor market, leading them to social exclusion. In the case of female prisoners, this gap is even more accentuated and integration difficulties increase, so the project has adopted a gender perspective. In order to meet the objectives, a training program aimed at social and labor inclusion was created with the aim of improving the living and working conditions of women prisoners and increasing their participation as active citizens in the information society.

Curriculum and Training Model Proposal for Infocomunicational Competences Acquisition in Prison

ICT have an important role in various areas of Portuguese society. Social reintegration is a key theme in the Portuguese penal system and its legislation. This dichotomy led to question if the existence of internet access in the school prison has been a reintegration key point. Literature reveals that education is a pivotal factor in the preparation of the inmate to reintegrate society and in the prevention and reduction of recidivism. The present schooling guidelines reinforce the importance of technology base knowledge in the curriculum of any individual. Thus, the acquisition of such competences is of extreme importance, and cannot be ignored in the education that is offered to all those that sit in the margin of society. Two case studies consisting in the implementation of short courses on infocomunicational skills in two prisons allowed to explore the relation between the concepts inmate, internet, and education. The results contribute with a proposal of a curriculum and training model on infocomunicational competences acquisition to apply in prison context.

Inmate Communication as a Conscientization Approach to Societal Mainstreaming

This chapter submits that societal mainstreaming of ex-convicts to have a normal life is possible through inmate communication. Inmate communication is a conscientization approach that consists of a holistic strategy to nourish the head, heart, hand, and soul of an inmate, the prison management, and the society. While restorative justice aims to reintegrate inmates once they have served their sentences, life for an ex-convict outside may no longer be the same. A condescending society condemns “convicts as convicts for life” no matter how much they have changed because of the rehabilitation efforts of the government to reform them. The case in point is the National Bilibid Prison, the biggest prison facility that houses more than 22,000 most dangerous inmates in Metro Manila, Philippines who have committed heinous crimes to serve their sentences. Media materials that can nurture the mind such as poems, songs, bookmarks, jingles, letters, etc. for instance that bear words and thoughts of endearment can build a positive attitude and look forward to an accepting society.

Prison Blogs, a Place of Freedom Behind Bars

This chapter reports on the cultural workshop which, from 2006 to 2008, encouraged a group of inmates at the Barcelona Youth Detention Centre to produce and publish blogs as a joint project between the Òmnia on-site internet access point, the prison library, and the Faculty of Library and Information Science of the University of Barcelona. The objectives of the project were to promote inmate education, improve their level of information, encourage them to read and write more, instill some ICT skills in them or strengthen those they already had, and broaden their contact with the outside world. Prison libraries are presented as an agent that supports the intellectual, social, and cultural development of inmates and thus can help them on the road to personal betterment. The prisoners' responses are critically assessed; the experience was considered positive, although the insufficient technological infrastructure and the prisoners' rejection of certain social conventions represent obstacles.

The Role of Information and Communications Technology in the Social Reintegration of Ex-Prisoners

The development of information and communications technology (ICT) over the past few decades has been positively surprising. Prison development has also been surprising, in a negative way. Hardline policy positions towards crime and the expansion in the consumption of ICT products are contemporaneous. They are co-occurrences. What makes sense of this apparent contradiction is the way societies experience distinct dispositions depending on the issues they have to face. The same people are able to be optimistic, in relation to the positive use of computers, and pessimistic as to the possibility of the criminal-penal system being able to combat crime. Is it possible for society to experience a disposition in which punitiveness regarding prisoners is replaced by the hope of reintegration for those convicted of crime? The answer is: there can be a shift of the dominant disposition, but for that we must reshape the whole of this society into another.

Internet Behind Bars

This chapter focuses on the relevance of information and communication technologies (hereinafter, ICTs) as an essential part of the day-to-day life of all societies nowadays. Nevertheless, a means that continue to be behind this reality is the penitentiary area regarding inmates' rights. Introducing ICTs within prison could improve the social reinsertion of persons serving a prison sentence. Deprivation of liberty entails normal contact with the prison subculture and the harmful effects of it, causing in cases of long-term sentences the so-called phenomenon of “prisonization.” This negative effect of imprisonment could be reduced if ICTs were used inside prisons in the different areas where they can have an impact, and which are treated in this research, as (1) access to information and culture, (2) basic and advanced training, (3) employment, (4) communication with the outside world, (5) treatment, or (6) leisure and entertainment. The value that new technologies would add to these areas in prison constitutes a way of humanization of prisons in the twenty-first century.

Prison and Social Reintegration

This study uses the voice of a formerly freedom-deprived individual, resorting to his memory, perception, and the exchange of the information acquired during his tenure in jail to interpret and understand the implications and manners of thought of those who live the prison reality. Following the qualitative methodology as the approach in the case study, this investigation demonstrates that in spite of the years that have passed, and of the efforts undertaken by the governments to make changes, jails continue being frequently damaged spaces, and in their interiors reigns a particular way of life in which violence is a necessary consequence, where socially diminished individuals retrain, with insufficient programs of attention, limited offers and opportunities of access amongst other restrictions, which end on disrespect and violation of their human rights because many times, more than stimulation for their rehabilitation, which is the proclaimed goal of the penitentiary system, jail is constituted into a place of development of their criminal career.

New Media Usage and the Impact on Inmates' Technological Profiles and Their Infocommunicational Skills

We live in a period of new literacies development, specifically the technological ones. Contact with new media or changes in more traditional ones leads to a need for different social, intellectual, and educational tools. As a consequence of the new demands of the twenty-first century, teaching had to be updated and monitored in order to foster the inclusion of individuals at school, work, socially, and digitally. The learning of technological tools should not marginalize individuals for their geographic, economic, and/or social characteristics, and should happen in an equitable way regardless of the teaching context. Media education is a factor that can favorably contribute to the process of the inmate inclusion in “free society” and to reduce recidivism. The chapter intends to reflect on the integration of the new media in the Portuguese education system in general, and later to analyze it in micro contexts, by comparative observation of the “citizen-inmate.”