Dossier

Issue 16

Wie eine “Insel” im Gefängnis

Bildung im Schweizer Strafvollzug

The concept of the total institution could be understood to suggest that prisons work like frictionless machines. However, research has long shown that prison life is ambiguous and often less clearly defi ned than one would expect. We present fi ndings from a project (BiSt), which was initiated in 2007 to improve basic education in the Swiss prison system. We build our account around a notion of fi ssure voiced by inmates: the idea that the educational unit is like an island (of normality) within the restricted and restrictive world of the prison.