Advancing Prison Education Through Partnership Working and Public Criminology

Despite the potential for education to act as a catalyst for improved mobility, justice, and growth in society, debates continue about how best to put this into practice. Whilst there is a consensus that education matters in supporting individuals to achieve growth, education in prison is often poor quality, insular, and lacking a cohesive and transparent delivery framework. This chapter critically examines the development of innovative and collaborative educational partnerships between prisons and higher education institutions, exploring the nature, opportunities and challenges of partnership working. This is especially pertinent given the growing influence of critical and public criminology discourse: the idea of the academic as a dispassionate, impartial observer is increasingly challenged. But the ideal of what education should be comes up against the hard and politicised realities of managing prison life, and diverse organisational cultures and practical considerations affect the viability of partnership working. Delivering transformative educational practices for the prison community is shaped by risk discourse, power dynamics, and entrenched societal and organisational cultures. Despite these challenges, our experiences of partnership working have been valuable in realising our commitment to public criminology and democratic participatory dialogue.