Education Against the Tide in Latin American Prisons: education versus punishment

Abstract

Promoting education in prison is latterly a difficulttask. This paper’s objective is to examine the structural causes of this complex situation. We have accomplished a research on official documents and laws, and visited prisons in many Latin American countries, in order to produce this study. Among the many discussed issues, we may highlight: impunity and the failure of the justice system; the limits of punishment;punishment as an ideology; the punishment imagery and the institutional contradictions.