Smart prisons and digital tools
The first Smart Prison in Finland was opened in 2021 in Hämeenlinna. In this women’s prison, each inmate has a laptop in their cell. The Smart Prison concept has enabled many new ways of studying at different education levels and made it easier for inmates to pursue education during their prison term. The laptops can be used to access whitelisted pages such as the Studyinfo website, dictionaries and a closed Moodle learning platform for upper secondary education.
Moreover, inmates can use their laptops for more than just studying. The Open Office programmes provided are of course crucial for studying in this day and age, but communicating with authorities and family members is just as important. Many of the inmates are mothers, and being able to make video calls to their children and other loved ones is an important feature of Smart Prisons. Contacts with authorities, prison health care and rehabilitation programmes can all be handled via computers – just like everywhere else in society! It is particularly important for inmates to maintain and learn digital skills during incarceration to minimize their risk of social exclusion.
Formal qualifications and vocational training
Prison inmates have long been able to (and sometimes even obliged to) work in various fields while serving their sentence, but these days we are more aware of the importance of formal qualifications. Increasingly, prisons are co-operating with educational institutions to offer inmates opportunities to pursue a qualification or participate in preparatory education (TUVA). Inmates can complete parts a vocational qualification alongside their work activities – or even an entire qualification! In Hämeenlinna Women’s Prison (the only closed prison for women in Finland), prisoners can choose between studies in Cleaning and Property Services, Textiles and Fashion Industry or Horticulture. Inmates are supervised by a trained supervisor while working, and a teacher from the local vocational school comes in once a week to teach and to carry out competence demonstrations together with the supervisor.
Generally speaking, the prison population has a significantly lower socioeconomic status and education level than the general population. Due to the high percentage of prisoners with ADHD, learning difficulties or language-related problems (as many as 70% have been found to have some degree of reading or writing problems), education provision in prisons focuses on primary education and preparatory education.
Preparatory education often forms the basis of formal education in prisons. Finnish preparatory education (TUVA) is aimed at the transition point between comprehensive school and upper secondary education and is suitable for everyone who has completed comprehensive school but does not have an upper secondary qualification. Preparatory education takes between six months and a year to complete, and the curriculum is the same in prisons as it is elsewhere. The education prepares students for upper secondary education and aims to strengthen their workplace skills and citizenship skills. Some schools allow students to improve their grades from comprehensive school or to complete parts of a vocational or general upper secondary qualification, all depending on the education provider. In any case, our guiding principle is that preparatory education should be a low-threshold programme open to everyone, giving participants tools they need to plan for their future!
Independent study opportunities
The flexible education offered in Finnish prisons is a well-functioning element of female inmates’ education. Courses from the comprehensive school syllabus and some compulsory parts of vocational qualifications are available nationwide as distance learning and material packs for in-cell use. This means that inmates in all prisons have an opportunity to complete Finnish comprehensive education or elements of vocational qualifications during their prison term even if there are no comprehensive or vocational schools in the area. Comprehensive education for adults is done remotely via video calls. The teachers can discuss with students and share materials on their screens.
Inmates can also study compulsory units (known as “common units”) required for all vocational qualifications. This way they can complete a maximum of 30 competence points out of the 180 competence points comprising a vocational qualification. Printed material packages are provided for the common units of vocational qualifications, so that students can study and complete the assignments independently in their cells. We also make use of print books for both comprehensive-level and upper secondary level education because they help many students learn more effectively and more in-depth than electronic books.
