Radicalization and Management of the Educational Valencies of Security in Criminal Enforcement

The paper focuses on an analytical study of the processes through which it is possible to prevent radicalized behaviours in an inmate while they are serving their prison sentence. Specifically, the focus is on the ensemble of informal and embedded educational actions that penitentiary staff enact in several phases of criminal enforcement, and which can lead to both the prevention of the rise of pathways of radicalization and the abandonment of related criminal culture and behaviours. The matter addressed concerns the emancipatory or oppressive nature of the learning processes that are developed while inmates are serving their term in prison. To this end, we consider two phases of criminal enforcement: reception as managed in the first 24 hours of the ‘new arrivals’, and prison work placement of the inmates. For each phase we set out to identify the different kinds of educational actions, favourable and adverse, to which inmates are exposed on a daily basis in their penitentiary life.