The borders of school inside Italian Juvenile Prisons

Abstract

School is the most embedded formal educational agency into society. Therefore, the more society evolves fast, the more school arranges to change itself, shaping new operative borders. So, what happens, instead, when school is located inside change-proof institutions such as Juvenile Prisons? National laws (Italian Republic Constitution, 1948; Italian Penitentiary System, 1975) and
international organizations (United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child, 20 November 1989) both recognize the right of minors and adolescents for education and learning, which is insuppressible even inside prisons and somewhere else individual freedom is deprived. But, how to convert this general orientations into self-efficient school practices inside Italian Juvenile
Prisons? How much able is the collaboration between School system and Juvenile Justice system to respond to the educational needs of young inmates, really? Starting from the hermeneutical analysis of available data referring to Ministerial sources and recent researches (MIUR-ISFOL report, 2014; ANTIGONE 3rd report, 2015), this essay aims to underline contradictions and discrepancies between how schooling is thought or is done inside Juvenile Prisons,
and to imagine how to apply corrective actions or strategies to make them fit to enhance both the cultural and educational growth and the emancipation of young inmates.