THE RIGHT TO EDUCATION IN PRISONS: SITUATIONAL APPROACH. CONTRIBUTIONS TO THE DEBATE ON EDUCATION AS A HUMAN RIGHT IN THE CONTEXT OF THE PRISON

Abstract

Confinement in penal units is used as a state "solution" mostly applied to the resolution of social conflict, making the prison a place where most people have not fully benefited from education, employment, health, housing and other guarantees and rights. Education is a fundamental human right, essential to exercise all other rights and which aims at the development of the subject. It is the state that should ensure and promote the full enjoyment of this and of all human rights, since in theory the incarcerated are only deprived of their freedom of movement. It should be noted that the development of this right in the context of prison, usually taken or not taken as a universal and inalienable right, but as a "benefit" for "good” prisoners at the expense of prison managements and sometimes with the inert complicity of school institutional managements located in penal units. That is why we must not forget that the person deprived of liberty is primarily a subject with rights. And as such, the state that keeps arrested/ incarcerated must be the guarantee of compliance with all of them. It is vital at this point the involvement of civil society in a public institution such as the prison to try to avoid the systematic violations of human rights occurring in Argentinean prisons, opening them for free society. So, education becomes a key right that will open the door to the recognition of other rights that, in most cases, have been denied or systematically violated outside and inside prison. It is possible that these issues and problems involved when the institutional and situational approach for the guarantee of the human right of education in the prison context are an invitation to reflect on the purpose and reason of prisons and how education is strengthened in this context as a right and not as a "benefit" making prison a social space that causes less damage to its inhabitants.

Key words: human rights; education; prison.