Infocommunication Skills As a Rehabilitation and Social Reintegration Tool for Inmates by Lídia Oliveira Daniela Graça

Author:Lídia Oliveira,Daniela Graça
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: IGI Global

The Barcelona Youth Detention Centre considered education of the inmates to be a broad and complex process that was carried out in widely ranging contexts, both formal and informal, which configured educational realities that were equally diverse. The arrival of summer marks the end of the academic year and it is the moment at which the training which the inmates have received needs to be given some sort of continuity. For the summer of 2006 this uplifting sociocultural project was programmed, which was characterised as having a light-hearted component, suitable for the summer period, while it was also included in the framework of education through leisure. The interest the prisoners showed in the contents of the workshop and the socio-educational dynamics that it generated made it advisable to programme an extension to the activity, which had initially been planned for the aforementioned summer period. So, it was continued and included within the education courses on offer and the treatment programmes as the Detention Centre; now, not so much as a library workshop, but as an activity in its own right.

During the running of the workshop, the principal objective of the organisers of the activity was to manage the contents of some blogs, improve the formal quality of the texts and consolidate habits. In the interpersonal plan, our interventions were aimed at improving the inmates’ self-concept and their self-esteem. Special emphasis was placed on ensuring that their posts acquired importance through what they expressed, and not so much for their form, although it was necessary for the inmates to present their texts with a minimum formal quality. Some of the participants were reluctant to make corrections, giving arguments that showed a defensive attitude through which they tried not to recognise their weaknesses. However, through helping them and providing constructive criticism, we tried to assist them in completing the frustrating process that having to revise the language, and in some cases the contents, represented. Gradually, some of the prisoners became used to writing with a word processor, although others continued with pen and paper. They came to use the dictionaries, the spell checkers and the programmes to edit images more and more, and they became advanced users of Blogger: they acquired the ability to redefine design templates, download and manipulate images, and carry out other parallel tasks.

It was also necessary to give them guidance in an individual fashion, in simple ways and at basic levels, with guidelines and techniques for intellectual tasks. The majority of the inmates worked intuitively, without following any didactic method, and that meant that they often asked for help when they came to write the content of the blog in their own words or to present a summary of their ideas. This was because they had not acquired some instrumental competences concerning basic school learning and, even as adults, they presented personal characteristics that were more those of adolescents. Examples of this are a lack of attention and of self-control —they always wanted to have everything here and now—, their lack of a general work ethic or their low tolerance of frustration.

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