But a new University of Otago three-year pilot programme, which will bring university-level training into the prison, aims to ease their reintegration into society.
Otago’s Inside-Out programme recently received $25,000 from New Zealand’s Due Drop Foundation — a charitable trust which focuses on wrap-around community programmes which have a direct impact on disadvantaged New Zealanders.
Inside-Out was launched in the United States in 1997, and brings together campus-based students with incarcerated students, based on the philosophy society is strengthened when higher education is made widely accessible and when it allows participants to encounter each other as equals.
University of Otago criminology and gender studies senior lecturer Dr Fairleigh Gilmour is one of only two Inside-Out trained educators in New Zealand, and will lead the pilot project.
She said the Due Drop grant meant the trial could be run as a "for-credit humanities internship" during the university’s summer school programme, allowing six incarcerated students and six campus students to complete an 18-point paper over six weeks, for three years.
"This pilot will allow us to explore the positive benefits of this inclusive approach to teaching and learning, as documented in Inside-Out initiatives across the world, and will also allow us to explore best practice in terms of adapting the Inside-Out approach for the Aotearoa New Zealand context."
Dr Gilmour trialled Inside-Out at the Otago Corrections Facility last year, running workshops in sociology, criminology and politics.
She said students and staff were positive about the trial outcomes, and some of the incarcerated students enrolled in further papers.
Campus students described it as an "inspiring and rewarding" experience.
"We are incredibly grateful for the generous donation by the Due Drop Foundation to support the Inside-Out pilot at the University of Otago," Dr Gilmour said.
"It is a wonderful opportunity for both the campus and incarcerated students."
Otago Corrections Facility general manager James Miles said the prison was very excited about the opportunities the partnership was offering prison learners.
"Research shows education has a strong, positive impact on people’s wellbeing and their employment prospects on release.
"This produces economic and social benefits for the individual and their family, as well as flow-on benefits for future generations and society as a whole through a more productive workforce, and safer, more equitable communities.
"Tertiary education is something most of our prison learners have considered as ‘not for them’.
"Through the programmes delivered by Fairleigh and the University of Otago team, the men are gaining new skills and qualifications as well as developing their critical and analytical thinking, confidence and a new belief in themselves — their capabilities and their future prospects."
Due Drop Foundation trustee Richard Jeffery said backing the initiative would strengthen the foundation’s commitment within this sector, and support a proven programme that aligned closely with the organisation’s principles of "intelligent giving".
