Sport in Prison by Rosie Meek

Author:Rosie Meek [Meek, Rosie]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Social Science, Criminology, Sports & Recreation, General, Cultural & Social Aspects
ISBN: 9781135081904
Google: NJ2LAgAAQBAJ
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 2013-11-07T04:55:12+00:00

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The contribution of sport towards education and employment opportunities in prison

There is no point having gym if you can’t do any courses. You need courses so when you get out you can use the qualifications to get back into work. (Prisoner, Category C)

I’ve learnt how I could work in an outside gym. It gives you responsibility, confidence, you learn how to be professional and project yourself. (Prisoner, Category B)

There is undoubtedly a link between improving educational opportunities, raising levels of numeracy and literacy, equipping prisoners with meaningful qualifications and skills and the likelihood that they can successfully desist from crime after release. It is not surprising, therefore, that education, employment and training are well established in representing one of the seven ‘resettlement pathways’ formulated by the Reducing Reoffending National Action Plan in identifying the factors that influence reoffending. In this chapter I explore the role of sport firstly as a way of engaging offenders in education and secondly as a meaningful and realistic route into vocational training and employment.

The role of sport in promoting education

As well as being a significant risk/protective factor in itself, education (or the lack of it) evidently has an especially powerful impact on many of these other recognised resettlement needs, for example health outcomes and family relationships, and interventions such as offending behaviour programmes risk having less impact on prisoners with poor levels of literacy (Davies, Lewis, Byatt, Purvis & Cole, 2004). An enduring paradox, however, is that those who have the most to gain from education are often those who are least likely to have benefitted from it, or to do so in the future, raising particular challenges for educators in the prison estate.

Despite evidence of pockets of good practice, prison education has experienced something of a crisis in recent decades, resulting in provision being stripped to a core curriculum. Historically education has not been prioritised by the government, the prison regime or by prison staff, but more recently it has become something of a competitive commodity, with prison education contracts being prioritised and resourced. The setting of educational targets has forced providers and prisons to be held more accountable for learning provision and outcomes, thus emphasising the importance of education within prisons. The development of the government’s now defunct Prisoner Learning and Skills Unit marked a new focus on prioritising offender learning, and the subsequent procurement by the Skills Funding Agency of Offender Learning and Skills Services (OLASS), together with the appointment of Heads of Learning and Skills in prisons, has generated an increased focus, not just on prisoner education, but on the importance of encouraging imaginative teachers to bring innovation into their teaching practices. Teaching can be demanding whatever the context, and especially so in a prison environment with its higher prevalence of negative previous learning experiences, behavioural problems, mental health problems and other needs and anxieties, coupled with a greater frequency of unrecognised learning difficulties, such as dyslexia.

Prisons by their very nature are closed and harsh environments and it can be especially

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