The higher education in prisons. The first steps of Ecuador

Abstract

Achieving Good Living is not possible without solving the social exclusion problems that require the expansion of the freedoms of historically marginalized groups, such as the people deprived of liberty, many of them, before committing criminal acts, they lived in an environment of violence and poverty, situation that in punitive jail is conceived as an institution of punishment and denigration, intensifies, accentuating antisocial behaviors that create vicious circles which rupture is achieved, among other things, by providing them new functions and capabilities, so that inclusive education in the same quality as offered in free life but with specific curricular and methodological designs that guarantee the effective transfer of knowledge to this group, it is key, constituting itself in the exercise of a human right that dignifies at the same time that it rehabilitates, being the higher education the one with the greatest transformer impact. Ecuador began a first pilot giving scholarships to a group of prisoners to access to university studies in the context of confinement, a plan that must overcome various obstacles requiring interinstitutional coordination and the commitment of society in order to yield the desired results, contributing to convert the prisons in real Social Rehabilitation Centers and to the Social Rehabilitation System in a promoter of the human rights and Good Living.