University Distance Education in Prisons as a Tool for Rehabilitation and Social Inclusion

Gina López-Armijos and Laura Ponce de León Romero ()
Additional contact information
Gina López-Armijos: Department of Institutional Strategic Planning, Faculty of Economics and Administration, Catholic University of Santiago de Guayaquil (UCSG), Guayaquil 090615, Ecuador
Laura Ponce de León Romero: Department of Social Work, Faculty of Law, National University of Distance Education (UNED), 28040 Madrid, Spain

Social Sciences, 2025, vol. 14, issue 5, 1-12

Abstract: Many countries use the deprivation of liberty as a punitive strategy to ensure citizen security. Nowadays, a rehabilitative perspective has also been included to promote social inclusion. University education is a potential tool for achieving this goal. The aim of this article is to gather the opinions of twenty students and ten professors concerning the realities of university education in an Ecuadorian prison. This study uses an onto-epistemological approach and concentrates on the perception of individuals, employing a qualitative methodology. The results show that these educational programs have positive effects on the students, improving their life projects, their behavior inside and outside jail, and their digital knowledge and ICT skills, reducing recidivism and promoting labor market reintegration. The conclusions suggest that university distance education is a tool for rehabilitation and social inclusion and that greater involvement is required on the part of the State, companies, and the community in general to facilitate the graduates’ labor reintegration, as well as follow-up and social support services for ex-offenders and their families.

Keywords: labor integration; prisons; recidivism; social work; university education (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: A B N P Y80 Z00 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2025
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/2076-0760/14/5/277/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/2076-0760/14/5/277/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jscscx:v:14:y:2025:i:5:p:277-:d:1646365

Access Statistics for this article

Social Sciences is currently edited by Ms. Yvonne Chu

More articles in Social Sciences from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().