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Critical Studies in Education

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The prison is another country: incarceratedstudents and (im)mobility in Australian prisons

Helen Farley & Susan Hopkins

To cite this article: Helen Farley & Susan Hopkins (2016): The prison is another country:incarcerated students and (im)mobility in Australian prisons, Critical Studies in Education, DOI:10.1080/17508487.2016.1255240

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The prison is another country: incarcerated students and(im)mobility in Australian prisonsHelen Farley and Susan Hopkins

Australian Digital Futures Institute, University of Southern Queensland, Toowoomba, Australia; OpenAccess College, University of Southern Queensland, Ipswich, Australia

ABSTRACTSpace, time and movement have particular meanings and signifi-cance for Australian prisoners attempting higher education whileincarcerated. In a sense, the prison is another ‘world’ or ‘country’with its own spatial and temporal arrangements and constraints forincarcerated university students. The contemporary digital univer-sity typically presupposes a level of mobility and access to mobilecommunication technologies which most Australian prisoners can-not access. This article examines the immobility of incarceratedstudents and their attempts to complete tertiary and pre-tertiarydistance education courses without direct internet access. Drawingon critical mobilities theory, this article also explores attempts toaddress this digital disconnection of incarcerated students andwhere such interventions have been frustrated by movement issueswithin the prison. Prison focus group data suggest the use ofmodified digital learning technologies in prisons needs to beinformed by a critical approach to the institutional processes andpractices of this unique and challenging learning environment. Thisarticle also highlights the limitations and contradictions of painfulimmobilisation as a core strategy of Australia’s modern, expandingpenal state, which encourages rehabilitation through education,while effectively cutting prisoners off from the wider digital world.

ARTICLE HISTORYReceived 3 April 2016Accepted 20 October 2016

KEYWORDSDigital learning; immobility;incarcerated students;mobility

Introduction: digital learning in an immobile world

Since the 1990s, mobility in the modern Western world has become synonymous withboth freedom and progress (Cresswell, 2006), due in part to time/space compressionand the accelerated movement of information, capital and people (Harvey, 1990). To bemodern is to be mobile (Cresswell, 2006, p. 15). In schools and universities, studentsand teachers too are on the move, through online, digital or eLearning, supported bynew communication technologies and mobile, internet-enabled devices (Farley &Murphy, 2015). Australia’s most marginalised and isolated students remain discon-nected, however, from the advantages and opportunities of mobility. If, as Cresswellsuggests (2006, p. 1), ‘mobility is central to what it means to be human’, then Australianprisoners are particularly vulnerable to disadvantage and dehumanisation in the post-modern digital age. Moreover, as Australian universities increasingly move to online

CONTACT Helen Farley Helen.Farley@usq.edu.au Australian Digital Futures Institute, University of SouthernQueensland, Toowoomba, QLD 4350

CRITICAL STUDIES IN EDUCATION, 2016http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/17508487.2016.1255240

© 2016 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group

only delivery of courses, incarcerated tertiary students are exceptionally educationallyvulnerable. The vast majority of incarcerated learners in Australian prisons have nodirect access to the internet or internet-enabled devices, even for educational purposes.For student-prisoners, disconnection from digital learning typically undermines theiraccess to higher education in the short term and successful rehabilitation in the longerterm.

In Western literature and popular culture, the prison has long been imagined as theultimate metaphor, or the very image, of immobility (see Armstrong, 2015). Australia’slong history as a remote penal colony, the enduring social and cultural isolation ofmodern Australian prisons and the relatively ‘secret history’ of distance higher educa-tion in Australian prisons, also contributes to multiple meanings and (mis)understand-ings about how prison education should work. While mobility, or ‘movement’ as it isreferred to in the daily life of prisons, is an especially significant issue facing Australianincarcerated students, its everyday realities are rarely synonymous with what the out-sider might imagine. Student-prisoners often complain that prison is ‘a different uni-verse’ or ‘another country’ from that which they have left behind in the ‘free world’.While they frequently stress, it may take years to acclimatise to this other country, theyare often highly motivated to interpret these different space-time worlds to the naïveresearcher or teacher-outsider. Hence, out of respect for these student-prisoners, whoare more commonly silenced through physical and digital isolation, this article prior-itises the voices of incarcerated students and lets them speak for themselves on educa-tional processes and practices, wherever possible. Presenting focus group data frominterviews with male incarcerated university students, this article identifies multiplebarriers encountered by incarcerated students, while at the same time, locating thesewithin a framework of critical mobility theories which indicate the spatial and temporalconstraints of the prison.

The age of migration or the age of incarceration: the business of ‘doing’time

While digital technologies are commonly associated with mobility as progress(Cresswell, 2006), our experience of teaching with modified digital technologies insideAustralian prisons suggests the issue of technological access is often complicated by themanagement of movement, time and space in institutional settings. Hence, somewhatironically, the new ‘mobility’ research vocabulary of spatiality, distance, travel andmovement, may provide the means for understanding and addressing the complexissues encountered by the most immobile subgroup of university learners, incarceratedstudents. Moreover, on a wider level, the expansion of the incarceration business inAustralia seems to contradict more utopian postmodern visions of the mobile andglobal free world (see De Giorgi, 2006; Wacquant, 2005). If we are living in the mobile‘age of migration’ (Castles & Miller, 1996), we are also living in the age of massincarceration (see De Giorgi, 2006; Wacquant, 2005), especially in Australia whereprison privatisation and prison populations are on the rise. As Wacquant (2005) andEarle (2011) have pointed out, the penal state has overtaken the welfare state, (and stateresponses to minority groups), over the past three decades in the Western democracies,reviving punitive approaches to managing ‘dangerous’ populations. As we shall see, the

2 H. FARLEY AND S. HOPKINS

contemporary digital university is far from innocent in these neo-liberal restructuringtrends, which may compound race and class-based disadvantages (see Earle, 2011).

While education has long been subjugated to the culture and time regimens ofindustrial capitalism (Ball, Hull, Skelton, & Tudor, 1984; Symes & Preston, 1997), themarketisation of education has further redefined education on technocratic, instrumen-tal ‘human capital’ terms (Ball, 1993; Symes, 2012; Symes & Preston, 1997). This isparticularly evident in prison education, where the ‘stakes’ (social and economic costs)are usually higher and the pressure intensified to make up for schooling deficits byturning social exiles into productive and disciplined members of the community.Moreover, Australian corrective services, like other public systems and services, areincreasingly subject to marketisation and privatisation, managed under contract byprivate corporations, or at least subject to the same economic priorities (seeAlexander & Martin, 2013; Brown & Moyle, 1994; Mason, 2013). Privately run prisonsmust still meet government performance standards, including targets for educationalenrolments, while claiming to provide cheaper corrective services through corporate‘efficiency’. Just as the modern ‘enterprise university’ is compelled to ‘mirror markets inorder to serve markets’ (Marginson & Considine, 2000, p. 5), the modern post-industrial prison is also in the competitive business of turning increasing numbers oflow socio-economic ‘clients’ into employable citizens and ‘disciplined’ members of thecommunity. Moreover, corporate prisons, like corporate universities, may impose heavyworkloads on staff while attempting to reconcile economic values with social respon-sibilities. In turn, this means the practical experience of prison education ‘on theground’ may be quite different from the ideals of equity and access, at least from thestudents’ perspective. Prisoners are the reluctant, captive products of a lucrative incar-ceration business which, like every big business, demands growth and diversification.Moreover, incarcerated tertiary students are frequently forced to negotiate the multiple,contradictory fictions of the post-industrial digital age; an age which is both mobile butstuck, open but unequal, humane but depersonalised. On the surface, both universitiesand prisons aim to maximise the successful social reintegration of marginalised indivi-duals through education. In reality, however, the chances of an incarcerated studentsuccessfully completing higher education, while inside the prison, are often severelycompromised by other institutional priorities and practices which deserve furthercritical investigation.

The research project and methodology

Moodles and (im)mobility in a prison: travelling light, but not getting far

The data on which this article is based are drawn from a larger and ongoing Australiangovernment-funded project, Making the Connection, which aims to improve access tohigher education for incarcerated students. In partnership with Queensland prisons, theproject developed an offline version of a university learning management system (LMS),a version of Moodle called the StudyDesk, which was loaded onto prison educationservers. This alternative virtual learning environment had no connection to the ‘real’internet and was physically isolated from the main prison computer network. This newoffline version of the StudyDesk allowed students to engage with electronic learning in

CRITICAL STUDIES IN EDUCATION 3

the prison education lab without needing to access the ‘real’ internet. The stand-aloneLMS would hold digitised course content in a simulated internet or intranet environ-ment. In theory, this eLearning innovation would provide incarcerated students with anopportunity to develop their digital literacy skills, engage with multimedia coursematerials and be relieved of the burden of carrying around heavy, hard copy booksand printed distance education packages as they moved within and between prisons.

During each stage of the project and each semester of study, incarcerated studentswere invited to participate in focus group discussions around eight questions abouttheir learning experiences. The student responses to those questions and our studymethodology is discussed in further detail below. Although the focus groups wereoriginally designed to elicit student reflection on their use of the trial digital technol-ogies of the offline LMS, student responses also shed light on the obstacles andconstraints they encountered while studying during incarceration. In fact, the mostsignificant constraint to successful study identified by the students themselves was notdigital (il)literacy, but movement issues within and between prison spaces whichproblematised their access to education materials and staff.

Hence, this article focuses not so much on the trial of the eLearning technology itself,but rather on the 2015/2016 students’ perceptions of studying digitised tertiary and pre-tertiary courses while incarcerated, through the framework of mobility issues. Studentresponses in this article are derived from in-depth face-to-face focus group discussionswith male incarcerated students undertaken over 2015–2016 inside one prison inQueensland, Australia. Queensland Corrective Services’ approval and university ethicsclearance were obtained to conduct prison focus groups wherein participants discussedboth their previous and current study experiences, future study and career goals andexperiences with digital learning. Participants were assured participation would notaffect their prison status. Queensland Corrective Services are also named partners onthe project and granted permission for the project team to work with correctionalcentres.

To date, ten 60-minute prison focus group interviews, organised around 8 keyquestions, have been conducted, with 117 incarcerated university students. The eightdiscussion questions were: (1) Please tell us about your reasons for deciding to study inprison; (2) Please tell us about your previous experiences with education within oroutside the prison; (3) What personal qualities or characteristics do you need to succeedin your studies within the prison? (4) What makes a successful distance educationuniversity student? (5) We would like to know about anything that makes it difficult foryou to study; (6) Please tell us about your future study and career aspirations; (7) Howmuch experience have you had with using computers? (8) Is there anything else aboutthe matters we have covered that you would like to add to or comment on?

Participants were advised, their responses would be treated anonymously and con-fidentially and advised of their rights to withdraw from the focus groups withoutpenalty. Students were also assured participating (or not) did not affect their grades,enrolment status or, as previously mentioned, their prison status, in any way. Anypersonal information obtained during the focus group discussions was de-identifiedduring data analysis, removing the risk of personal information being made known. Allparticipant names used in this article and in the discussion below are fictional.

4 H. FARLEY AND S. HOPKINS

This mobility analysis on teaching incarcerated university students was also informed byour collaborative attempts to adapt our university course materials and teaching practice tosuit the needs and interests of incarcerated students. Course examiners, lecturers, eLearningdesigners, copyright personnel and graphic designers worked to create courses that wouldwork on the offline technologies, in response to feedback from education officers, jurisdic-tional owners and the students themselves.

One of the key findings of the early stages of theMaking the Connection project was thatincarcerated students effectively had only a few hours a week to access the prison computerlabs and this movement issue severely compromised their ability to complete a coursewhich was only offered in full-time, distance education mode. Through focus groupdiscussions with student-prisoners, it soon became clear that developing and installingappropriate, approved internet-independent, digital technologies was only a small part ofthe challenge of improving access for incarcerated tertiary students. In face-to-face discus-sion, incarcerated students were consistently determined to explain the social, cultural andinstitutional factors which also influenced their ‘access’ to higher education. It was clear,incarcerated students felt disoriented and disadvantaged by their disconnection, not justfrom the internet, but from personal and social support. Incarcerated students are acutelyaware, they are on the losing end of the unequal distribution of ‘network capital’ (seeCastells, 1996; Sheller, 2014). As students explained in their own words:

In here you’re isolated. When you get out your network base is all over. You have to startall over again. We miss out on those networks that people outside have.

(Matthew, male incarcerated student, 2016)

Getting materials on time is an issue because it’s gone digital. We still need the books.Some lecturers will send me the stuff, others won’t. There are worksheets I need to fill outthat I never received. I guess it got left in the too hard basket.

(Michael, male incarcerated student, 2016)

It gets frustrating because you get behind and behind. Most of our time is spent waiting.Everything is in slow time.

(Caleb, male incarcerated student, 2016)

It is important to remember that the participants in this study have no direct access tothe internet, smart phones or any other internet-enabled devices. As the incarceratedstudents explain, this digital disconnection makes studying post-secondary courseswhile incarcerated, increasingly difficult:

It has become very computer-oriented. You do feel like you’re removed from that society.(Alex, male incarcerated student, 2016)

I’ve used the internet outside. But by the time I get parole in 5 or 10 years, I’m not going tobe up to date. It’s stressful. It will definitely affect my chance of employment; especiallywhen we’re already behind with a criminal record.

(Ryan, male incarcerated student, 2016)

Although it was always going to be difficult to bring mobile communication andinformation technologies to such an immobile population, we did not anticipate thenumerous obstacles we would encounter as teachers and researchers. As is often thecase with prison research, there were many security and logistical challenges to over-come, framed by complicated institutional practices and politics. In theory, the uni-versity’s tertiary preparation programmes were to be loaded onto servers and accessed

CRITICAL STUDIES IN EDUCATION 5

through the desktop computers in the prison education block to allow incarceratedstudents to undergo the same, or at least comparable, digital learning experiences asmainstream students. In practice, however, the project was a lesson in how highereducation works (or does not work) within a penal institution and how the mobility orlack of mobility of prisoners shapes their educational experiences.

Just passing through: teacher or tourist?

A crucial factor in developing a deeper understanding of the experiences of incarceratedstudents is the recognition that these learning experiences are inevitably shaped byinstitutional practices and procedures. What may appear on the surface to be a questionof access to the ‘right’ technology, is actually a question about the definition andmanagement of education in Australian prisons, and what education can mean forthe most disadvantaged and marginalised members of our information society. Thisarticle takes a critical standpoint on prison tertiary and pre-tertiary education, from theperspective of critical participatory action researchers and teaching practitioners activein the field (see Kemmis, McTaggart, & Nixon, 2014). Hence, the approach of thisarticle is not to address mobility technologies or even mobility per se, but to investigatehow (im)mobility is implicated in keeping marginalised students ‘stuck’ in an unequalsystem reproduced by isolationist and punitive policies. Working within ‘the newmobilities paradigm’ of social theory (Sheller, 2014), it is evident that prison time-space, or the timings and spacings of Australian correctional institutions, negativelyaffect incarcerated students and their ability to complete their tertiary and pre-tertiarydistance education studies. Combining critical theory, spatial mobility theory andsociotechnical studies encourages us to rethink traditional approaches to university‘access and equity’ for non-traditional students (see Sheller, 2014). As Gulson andSymes suggest (2007, p. 3), employing spatial analyses in critical educational studiesor ‘making space for space in education’, may be useful in exposing the power dimen-sions reflected and reinforced in education contexts: ‘The language of exclusion is, byand large, spatial; who’s in, who’s out, at the heart, on the margins’. Nowhere is thismore evident than in the prison, where those excluded from society, struggle toreconcile the promise of education with the realities of limited and regimented prisontime-space.

To borrow the language of John Urry (2002), we also feel, it is important that theincarcerated students not be subject to a kind of uncritical ‘tourist gaze’ of eLearningresearchers just passing through. Rather, our focus group research was complementedby regular ongoing face-to-face teaching support within the prison and action researchdata have already fed back into improving teaching practice, service and support forthese incarcerated university students. We believe, it is particularly important to high-light issues of unequal access to digital mobilities, with sensitivity to the literal andmetaphorical (im)mobility of marginalised students: ‘Indeed the mobilities of somealways presuppose the immobilities of others (Urry, 2002, p. 160)’. The premise of themodern Australian prison, after all, is that criminals must be isolated and immobilisedso that other citizens in the community may be free to move safely. It is in the space ofeducation, however, that the competing interests of security and rehabilitation fre-quently come into contact and cause tension for incarcerated university students.

6 H. FARLEY AND S. HOPKINS

While almost all Australian prisons support education in principle, in practice, educa-tion is often overridden by security concerns, in particular, security concerns aroundthe transfer and movement of prisoners from one place to another.

Inequality and painful immobilisation: when all roads led to the carceralstate

Australia is currently in the midst of a carceral boom, which channels mostly minorityand low socio-economic groups into the expanding penal system (Australian Bureau ofStatistics, 2015). As Reiman and Leighton (2010) observed in their seminal critique ofthe American criminal justice system, ‘justice’ is rarely ‘value free’, but rather serves thepolitical interests of the dominant social class. Inequalities of race, gender and class arecertainly reproduced in Australia’s criminal justice system, compounded by post-welfarist, neo-liberal policies which push already vulnerable individuals into increas-ingly desperate situations.

The number of prisoners in Australian prisons has recently hit a 10-year high, with36,134 in adult corrective services custody (Australian Bureau of Statistics, 2015). Thenational imprisonment rate is now 196 prisoners per 100,000 adult population – whichis almost three times higher than in Scandinavian countries (Australian Bureau ofStatistics, 2015; International Centre for Prison Studies, 2013). Most shocking is theimprisonment rate of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people, who comprise overone-quarter (9,885 or 27%) of the total prisoner population while making up just 2% ofAustralia’s population (Australian Bureau of Statistics, 2015). Indigenous women arethe fastest growing subgroup of Australian prisoners, with the number incarceratednearly doubling over the past decade (Rubinsztein-Dunlop, 2014). Also alarming is theimprisonment rate of unsentenced people, who now make up more than a quarter ofAustralia’s prisoner population – the highest level in a decade (Australian Bureau ofStatistics, 2015). Unsentenced prisoners are those held on remand while awaiting theoutcome of their trial. Australia seems to be accelerating mass incarceration of minoritygroups, effectively creating debtors’ prisons of disadvantaged individuals who cannotafford to advocate in their own best interests in the face of predatory capitalism andpunitive pathways (see The Guardian, 2014; Pen, 2015, p. 133).

In Western Australia (WA) for example, more than 40% of the prison population areAboriginal and Torres Strait Islander prisoners (Australian Bureau of Statistics, 2015).In that state, the proportion of WA prisoners incarcerated for fine defaults tripled from2008 to 2013, with one in six Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander prisoners incarcer-ated because they could not afford to pay penalties or settle unpaid fines (see TheGuardian, 2014; Pen, 2015, p. 133). In this post-welfare penal state, state power ismerged with private and predatory interests, creating new pathways to incarceration foralready marginalised individuals. Most Australian prisoners come from a backgroundof multiple disadvantage, including unemployment, low educational attainment, familyviolence and poverty (Australian Bureau of Statistics, 2015; Australian Institute ofFamily Studies, 2015; Bedford, 2007; Vinson, 2004, 2007; White & Graham, 2010).Contact with punitive regimes is also often compounded by a related personal sense ofhopelessness and fatalism, depression, mental illness, homelessness and illiteracy(Australian Institute of Family Studies, 2015; Australian Institute of Health and

CRITICAL STUDIES IN EDUCATION 7

Welfare, 2012; Pen, 2015). Despite the fact that prisons do not work in terms ofdeterring offenders – three out of five Australian prisoners are repeat offenders(Australian Bureau of Statistics, 2015; Ritchie, 2011) – state governments are currentlybuilding new prisons and/or reopening previously closed ones. In Queensland, thispenal expansion is presented to the public in terms of new ‘learn or earn’ prisons, whichwill supposedly ensure ‘value for money’ by keeping prisoners engaged in industry andenrolled in educational courses (see Bourke, 2014; Gould, 2015). Currently, only 1.5%of Australia’s prison population is engaged in higher education studies (AustralianGovernment Productivity Commission, 2016, Ch. 8.19). Vocational training courseshave the highest participation rates at 23% (Australian Government ProductivityCommission, 2016, 8.19). As we shall see, the market model of education may notalways be in the best interests of the most marginalised student populations, includingincarcerated students, who need intensive, specialised and individualised ongoingsupport.

‘Always stuck’: social mobility and social immobility

Contemporary corporate prisons present education and training as key to their socialresponsibility package and as a solution of sorts to the problem of prisoners being‘stuck’ after incarceration in a perpetual cycle of unemployment and reoffending(see, for example, Australian Government Productivity Commission, 2016). It israrely acknowledged in such accounts, however, that incarcerated students oftenfelt ‘stuck’ or denied the opportunity for social mobility, even before they went toprison. As Evans (2007, p. 298) observed, while individuals with a criminal recordconsistently face widespread discrimination in the employment market, it is inap-propriate to speak of ‘re-entry’, when many prisoners were never fully included inthe economy or society prior to incarceration. As critical mobilities research hassuggested (see Cresswell, 2006; Sheller, 2014), movement is mostly classed anduneven in the post-industrial society and economy. Even amongst the relativelymotivated subgroup of university students within the prison population, our prisonfocus groups captured mixed feelings towards education as a possible pathway tosocio-economic mobility. On the one hand, incarcerated students frequently appreci-ate the opportunity for ‘self-betterment’ that education seems to provide; on theother, they are sceptical about their chances of moving up to another economic levelor social class, even with a degree. The students in our study were often acutelyaware that their incarceration and criminal record had severely restricted theirchances for future social mobility, locking them into an immobile underclass. Theyalso discussed how the educational pathway was often blocked by institutionalprocesses and movement issues within the prison, thus further frustrating theirattempts to climb out of compounding disadvantage. The responses in our focusgroups suggest some incarcerated students rationalise their criminal activities as akind of entrepreneurial resistance to this lack of opportunities for social mobility intheir class and geographical positioning:

I come from a small town. There’s no jobs and nothing to do there. There’s no women.Being a farmer doesn’t earn you a huge amount of money. Not the sort of money I could

8 H. FARLEY AND S. HOPKINS

make from crime. I could maybe end up with a salary of $600 a week on a farm. But Idon’t want to be just a shit kicker!

(Ken, male incarcerated student, 2016)

I left school in year 10. I couldn’t get a job so I fell into dealing drugs.(Finn, male incarcerated student, 2016)

The incarcerated students seem painfully aware that the ‘fair go’ egalitarianism ofAustralia’s national mythology does not include them. The incarcerated students seekrelevance and contemporariness through their higher education studies but are fru-strated by the slowness and rigidity of their surroundings, both behind and beyond theprison gates. Students explained:

We want to keep up with the times. We don’t want to be stuck in the past. We want tokeep up.

(Declan, male incarcerated student, 2016)

You want to better yourself, but how do you interact with people on a higher level? Itdepends on the people you’re surrounded by. None of my friends are doctors or lawyers.Even with my study, I’ll never be able to break into that.

(Marco, male incarcerated student, 2016)

The study at the end of the day is just a piece of paper. My real experience is in criminalactivity, underworld dealing. My friends and contacts are all in that life. Facebook friendsdon’t accept you when you’ve been incarcerated, when you’re in that life.

(Zack, male incarcerated student, 2016)

In here we’re losing the opportunity to talk to other people, to discuss what we’re learning.When I finally did get to talk to someone I realised I was pronouncing the words wrongfor years. I didn’t know how to pronounce the words because I had never heard themspoken.

(Anton, male incarcerated student, 2016)

While prison education is often defined and delimited in instrumental terms of employabilityand efficiency (see, for example, Australian Government Productivity Commission, 2016),the students themselves do not always see it that way. Incarcerated students commonly valueeducation in humanistic, social and personal development terms. When asked why theychoose to study, common responses include; ‘proving tomyself I can do it’, ‘being a good rolemodel to my children’ and ‘keeping my mind learning’. In fact, incarcerated students are farmore likely to identify and extol the redemptive and humanistic value of higher educationover any perceived economic advantage in a competitive labour market.

Both sides of the same walkway: coerced mobility and coerced immobility

‘Time out-of-cells’ is often used by Western governments as an indicator of howhumane a custodial environment can claim to be (see Australian GovernmentProductivity Commission, 2016, Ch. 8.6). A prisoner’s average hours outside the cellor ‘slot’ each day will inevitably be subject to security priorities and the securitycategory of the individual prisoner. In some prisons for example, prisoners are dividedinto separate security and accommodation or housing categories such as ‘residential’custody and ‘secure’ custody. Average time out-of-cells tends to be higher for prisonersin open or residential custody than for those held in secure custody (see Australian

CRITICAL STUDIES IN EDUCATION 9

Government Productivity Commission, 2016, Ch. 8.6). The different groups are keptseparate from each other at all times which means secure prisoners cannot move on thewalkway while residential students are on it. Secure prisoners may be moved toresidential for good behaviour (or back to secure if their behaviour is perceived asproblematic). Prisoners may also be moved to break up problematic or ‘destabilising’friendship groups or emerging gangs. Prisoners may also request to be moved toanother unit or centre if they are being victimised or bullied by another inmate.

Prisoners may also request to bemoved, to be closer to familymembers. This may include,especially in the case of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander prisoners, family within theprison, such as fathers, uncles and cousins who are already incarcerated. Most prisoners willbe given some notice of transfers so they can organise their affairs, however, in the case ofserious breaches of behaviour standards or those subject to the highest category of securityclassification, prisoners may be moved without notice to other centres with the same orhigher security classification. If a security issue arises, the whole centre may be ‘locked down’which means prisoners cannot move beyond their unit or cell. Some centres may have aregular ‘lock down’ time each day or each week. In the case of an emergency or serioussecurity breach, all movement may stop at any time and incarcerated students may beescorted out of the computer room or education block and back to their cells. Dependingon the nature of the breach, and his level of involvement in it, an incarcerated student may beprevented from accessing the education centre for weeks at a time. If he breaches centre rules,an incarcerated student may be put on a restricted movement order, or put in a detentionunit, which will in most cases severely undermine his ability to successfully complete hisstudies.

When prisoners are moved between centres, this can also wreak havoc on their studyschedules. It is common for incarcerated students who are moved to a new prison to apply toextend or defer their studies, which then commonly leads to dropping out or failing tocomplete. Study materials are often lost or misplaced along the way and must be replacedupon application to the university. In a literal and metaphorical sense, moving betweenprisons can seem as disorienting to the student as moving to another country. Incarceratedstudents in transit must cope with the significant variability in attitudes and access toeducation across different prisons and advise the university, usually by mail, of their changein circumstances and mailing location. Ironically, the incarcerated student may appear to thedigital university as transient and immobile at the same time – and expensive in time costsoverall. Relocated prisoners must re-establish themselves with centre education officers(where they are available), try to get back on the ‘education list’ and rely on the goodwill ofthe university and its lecturers to work around their exceptional circumstances and help themcatch up on what they have missed. Sadly, relocated prisoners often drop out of their studiesaltogether at this point and are never heard from, at the university end, again. As previouslymentioned, there is considerable variability in access to post-secondary education acrossAustralia’s 111 custodial facilities. The students in our focus groups shared their experiencesof studying in different centres, commenting that at some of the oldest and more traditionalprisons, it is ‘impossible’ to study post-secondary courses at all. From their perspective, themovement between prisons is like ‘organised chaos’ with educational access, where they canget it, often a matter of ‘random luck’.

The incarcerated students in this study frequently identified ‘movement issues’within the prison as the most significant obstacle to being a successful student while

10 H. FARLEY AND S. HOPKINS

incarcerated. The key issue which emerged from the focus group discussions was theirlack of ability to move to the education rooms to access the computers for adequatestudy time each day:

The hardest thing is getting access to the computers and the education room. If I couldcome here every day, I would come every day, but there has to be allocated time slots.Movement is controlled by the officers and that’s it. If they don’t open the gates, you don’tget there. If they don’t call it, you don’t go.

(Adam, male incarcerated student, 2015)

Obviously security takes precedence in here but you should be able to get to the educationblock and see education people if you need to. That’s if the centre is serious aboutrehabilitation for us.

(Kurt, male incarcerated student, 2015)

We don’t get support; the onus is always on us to fight for it.(Leon, male incarcerated student, 2015)

Even though they call this distance education, this in here is really distance education. Thedistance between one building and the next is enormous. The distance between the unitand the education block. It could be a world away.

(Zack, male incarcerated student, 2016)

Education takes least priority. If there is an issue or event, education is the first thing to beclosed. The prison officers are very reluctant to let you move and even come to theeducation block. If you’re not on the list at the front, you can’t get in. Even if you’vegot assignments to hand in.

(Forrest, male incarcerated student, 2015)

‘Groundhog day’: learning on prison time

As Armstrong has observed (2015, p. 1), in her analysis of the function of the corridorand the cell in the Scottish penal system, ‘prisons are as much places of movement asstillness’, in part because contemporary prisons work, ‘specifically by keeping prisonersbusy’. In the modern prison, time is broken up into repetitive rotations and regimentedactivities which require the prisoner to both wait and move at authorised times(Armstrong, 2015, p. 5). This direction of movement imparts not just a narrative oforder and security, but also the power relations within the prison, which discipline bothprisoner and non-prisoner alike (Armstrong, 2015, p. 12). Education is central tomobility and the management of time in the prison on a number of levels: it is aphysical destination which incarcerated students may (or may not) move to, it is apsychic tool for rendering the passing of time less painful and it is part of the process bywhich prisoners are disciplined, for failure to observe and obey time can result in theremoval of education privileges. One of the primary frustrations of prison life is that theprisoner must surrender his own ability to control space, time and mobility.

In many Australian prisons, both the physical architectures and the ‘practice archi-tectures’ (Kemmis et al., 2014) of the institution resemble that of a state secondaryschool. As Symes and Preston observed (1997, p. 189), ‘schools have become importantsites of promoting disciplined time-usage, wherein we become conscious of time and itsvalue in the moral scheme of Western society’. Education practices and processes havealways been concerned with the management of space and time, inducting students into

CRITICAL STUDIES IN EDUCATION 11

the world of work and the machinery of surveillance and self-government (Gulson &Symes, 2007; Symes, 2012; Symes & Preston, 1997). As the vast majority of incarceratedstudents are early school leavers, unemployed at the time of their incarceration, themodern corporate prison aims to pick up where the schooling system failed, instillingnew habits of punctuality, order and discipline in ‘offenders’.

As Symes (1999) has pointed out, while the moral economy of industrial capitalismhas always demanded these ‘virtues’, the post-industrial society has normalised ‘worka-holism’, making working evenings and weekends a fact of life for full-time workers.These social, cultural and historical trends are intensified in unique ways for incarcer-ated students. For example, in our focus groups, incarcerated students complained thatwhen they attempted to negotiate more time for study, they were told by some custodialstaff that they had better get ready for ‘the real world’, (of the post-industrial economy)where ‘everyone’ is expected to work long hours and study at the same time.

Time consciousness is a core and mostly unavoidable element of prison life. As oneincarcerated student put it, ‘We’re still waiting, always waiting’. Prisons will typicallyhold to a structured, relatively inflexible day managed around security routines. Thedaily timetable may be visible on a unit notice board, but most prisoners will haveinternalised it through routine. The routine is often oppressive and disorientatingbecause it is something the prisoner has almost no control over and is subject tochange without notice. This creates added pressure for the incarcerated student whois typically trying to juggle the university calendar and assessment due dates with thecompeting priorities of the prison as a ‘corrective’ institution.

It is interesting to note that one Australian incarcerated student (below) describedthe experience of studying while incarcerated as ‘Groundhog Day’. It seems, despitecultural difference, in the age of time/space compression, some references to globa-lised and Americanised popular culture are universal. In describing prison as‘Groundhog Day’, the prisoner is making a cultural reference to the 1990sAmerican fantasy film of that name about a character doomed to repeat thesame day over and over in an oppressive cycle of forced repetition. The blackcomedy of the film Groundhog Day derives from the increasingly desperate attemptsof the depressed Bill Murray character to break out of the temporal loop he is stuckin. As our student says:

The world changes out there, but we’re in our own little world in here. Things change,people change but we do the same thing every day in here. It’s Groundhog Day in here.You block out the outside world just because it’s easier. There’s no reintegration here.

(Mick, male incarcerated student, 2016)

The amount of time allocated to education within the prison’s daily timetable seems tobe a constant source of concern for incarcerated students. This is compounded by thefact that issues of time are frequently intertwined with issues of space and movementbetween spaces. For example, there is often student anxiety around the issues of the‘door list’ and ‘the education list’. Prisoners will often be required to present to anofficer’s station to be checked against the list of those approved for education and otherprogrammes. If they are not on the approved list, they may not move, they areeffectively immobilised. Students frequently complain in the focus groups that althoughthey are an approved student, their name does not always appear on the list and hence,

12 H. FARLEY AND S. HOPKINS

they cannot move from their residential unit to the education centre or to see educationstaff. In their eyes, the ‘list’ is variable and unreliable because it is used as a disciplinarystrategy. Hence, it becomes a focus for anxiety, frustration and depression. As anincarcerated student explains it:

In prison there’s always a barrier. You’re not sure if you can even get to the educationblock. You have to take a request form into education and it can take a week to get back toyou. You can’t just come when you want to.

(Anthony, male incarcerated student, 2016)

People in here haven’t had a good experience with education. They get frustrated becauseit takes weeks to get a little problem solved. A person has to be very patient to study inhere. The only personal quality that really matters in here is patience.

(Matt, male incarcerated student, 2015)

Time is a constant source of tension for incarcerated students in the modern prison, notonly because education timetables may conflict with higher prison priorities such assecurity, but also because some incarcerated students feel, they do not have enoughtime to study. Despite the popular misconception that prisoners always have a surplusof time, the focus group participants frequently complained about having inadequatetime to study as well as work in prison industries and complete their other compulsoryprison courses, such as the psychology-based behaviour management programmes:

I had to defer my uni studies last semester. I had to get through the core prison programsyou have to put first if you want to get parole. And just the environment is really loud. It’sa hard place to study.

(Chris, male incarcerated student, 2016)

Another complained:

Coming down here to the education room twice a week doesn’t give me enough time tounderstand it. I have to go days without any help. There’s no other students in my unit to helpme. Four to six hours a week is not enough time in the education block to get my study done.

(Ben, male incarcerated student, 2016)

Sadly, another incarcerated student explained in the focus group his decision todrop out:

Sometimes study is just another added pressure. You’re tearing your hair out because fourhours a week is not enough time in the education room to keep up with all the assignments. Ihave to study on the floor too because there’s no single cells. I’m thinking of just giving up. It’sanother stress you don’t want to put on yourself in here.

(Jett, male incarcerated student, 2016)

Study, while an added pressure for some, is also a way to manage time, or a tool to pushback against the ‘crawl of time’.

The best thing about education is it gives you an escape. It gives you something else tothink about. It makes the time go faster.

(Tom, male incarcerated student, 2016)

Another incarcerated student went further, suggesting that study had changed the wayhe experienced or ‘did’ time:

CRITICAL STUDIES IN EDUCATION 13

It changes your time dynamic. You want time to slow down. You think: ‘Where did thistime go?’ I want this day, this week to go slower because I have assessment or study to do!

(Forrest, male incarcerated student, 2016)

Studying on the floor: learning in prison spaces

Another issue which frequently arose in focus group discussions was the issue ofinadequate space, or as the incarcerated students perceive it, overcrowding. InQueensland in particular, the rapid expansion of the prison population in recentyears has led to significant overcrowding in prisons and an escalation in prisoner onprisoner violence (Rubinsztein-Dunlop, 2014). Some students claimed that the cells andunits were holding more men than they were originally designed to accommodate,which had a detrimental effect on their attempts to study. Students complained of beingforced to sleep and study on a mattress on the floor, due to overcrowding issues and alack of understanding or support from their cell mates:

We’re doubled up, so I have to study on the floor when he’s using the desk, if you couldcall it a desk. You can’t spread out; there’s just not enough room.

(Aaron, male incarcerated student, 2016)

Some students complain that they are housed with other prisoners who sabotage theirstudy attempts, by making too much noise, or taking up too much space:

I have to get up at 4.30am to study before everyone else wakes up. Because of over-crowding, I’m basically on the floor. I don’t have a room to myself and not everyone in myunit studies. There are 7 or 8 other people in my unit I have to share with. Some are loudand distracting.

(Andy, male incarcerated student, 2016)

Like time, space in a prison takes on new dimensions which reflect power relations,between the prisoner and the institution, the prisoner and custodial staff and amongstthe prisoners themselves. Moreover, the organisations of space and time in the prisonare always framed by demands for security, discipline and economic efficiency, some-times to the detriment of higher education. In an overburdened and underfundedsystem, staffing shortages may also affect organisations of space and time in the prison.Students frequently complain that the ‘lock-down’ or confinement to cells time may beused as a strategy to deal with staffing shortages, because it is less expensive than thesupervision of large groups in large spaces. The flow on effects for incarcerated studentsmay mean more time studying on the floor instead of in spaces more conducive to quietstudy. Incarcerated students are apparently living with the reverse of the speed econ-omy, while the rest of the world moves on rapidly without them, they are still subject tothe tyranny of distance. Their ‘country’, their ‘world’, is smaller, but not in the waypostmodern theorists might have imagined.

Immobility after education: the net or the cage

Our focus group discussions usually concluded with questions about the students’future study and career aspirations. The majority of the participants were positiveabout the benefits of studying while incarcerated, although they did invariably highlight

14 H. FARLEY AND S. HOPKINS

the ways both the prison and the university had made distance education difficult forthem. Their individual hopes for the future were also tempered by critical insights onthe economic, political and social context, which they suggested had made socialmobility difficult, if not impossible for them, despite their educational achievements.As the incarcerated students explained:

It reminds you how to learn again and how to think again. After so many years of notthinking.

(Karlos, male incarcerated student, 2015)

I’ve been in different social groups now that I am studying. I wish I did it while I was outside.(Stef, male incarcerated student, 2015)

I want to advance myself before I go home. I’ve got big time to fill. Finishing with a degree.It gives your friends and family something positive to say about you.

(Steven, male incarcerated student, 2016)

I’m enrolled to start a Bachelor of Commerce. I want to keep up to date with what’s goingon. With a solid education, I might find myself a stable job and stay out of jail. A lot ofwishful thinking maybe or just hope. It’s hard to make the connection between the studyand what you can do with it.

(Frankie, male incarcerated student, 2016)

Although these discussions started with the students explaining the disadvantages ofdigital disconnection and the conspicuous absence of the internet (the ‘net’), they alsodiscussed the disadvantages of isolationist, punitive policies generally (the ‘cage’). Ateach focus group, there was a palpable sense of frustration, fatalism, depression, angerand resistance (or some combination of these) around the literal and metaphoricalsense of living through too much ‘gate shutting’ as opportunities were closed to thembefore, during and after incarceration. Behind the anger expressed by incarceratedstudents at these discussions is also a fear of crossing over to the ‘other country’ ofthe outside world which has moved on without them. While the modern corporateprison speaks in the language of rehabilitation, the backstories told by the prisonersthemselves suggest transformative education cannot be effectively delivered within awider context of disconnection and isolation. Students claim:

Because I’ve been out of the career world for so long people will question me. Employerswill say, ‘What have you done for the past ten years?’ I wouldn’t employ a criminal. Whywould you bother when there are ten other people with a degree and with experienceahead of you?

(Tom, male incarcerated student, 2016)

But we still have hope. You still try to be optimistic.(Matthew, male incarcerated student, 2016)

It seems, from the statements supplied by participating incarcerated students, thefocus for incarcerated students (as for other marginalised non-traditional universitystudents) should not be just on recruitment, access and meeting numerical enrol-ment targets for funding, but rather on the more challenging goal of providingadequate support, flexibility and understanding for ‘clients’ as complex social beingsin very challenging circumstances.

CRITICAL STUDIES IN EDUCATION 15

Conclusions and future directions

One of the key learnings of the Making the Connection project is that incarceratedstudents are often limited in their ability to move to the education block where theeLearning computers are located. In response to this identified limitation, it is hoped,the project may in future (if granted prison management approval) provide course-loaded notebook computers to participating incarcerated students so they will be betterable to study in their cells. In response to student concerns, the project is also workingon more flexible and specialised university ‘pathways’ programmes that aim to supportincarcerated students through to post-release.

Another key learning of the project is that learning technology issues can only beeffectively understood in social, cultural and political contexts. The incarceratedstudent, attempting to complete post-secondary courses in the age of the digitaluniversity, is in some sense the epitome of immobility, subject to frustratingextremes of temporal and spatial control. Hence, while innovative interventions toimprove access for isolated students must continue to be supported, these interven-tions may also benefit from the application of critical mobilities theories, facilitating‘mobility justice’ for incarcerated students (see Sheller, 2014) for example. Whileentrepreneurial institutions, like prisons and universities, work hard to expand theirreach, enrolling non-traditional students in the interests of access, equity and profit,it is important to recognise that these learners may also require expensive, specia-lised and intensive support to successfully complete these studies. Moreover, whileneo-liberal institutions increasingly frame education in instrumental ‘human capital’terms, many student-inmates are holding to more humanistic understandings ofeducation as an opportunity to imagine new selves and new pathways – paths thatdo not always follow a straight line.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Funding

This work was supported by The Making the Connection project funded by the AustralianGovernment HEPPP.

Notes on contributors

Associate Professor Helen Farley is based in the Australian Digital Futures Institute, University ofSouthern Queensland (USQ), and is the project leader of the Making the Connection projectwhich is improving access to higher education for incarcerated students and other tertiary andpre-tertiary students without internet access.

Dr. Susan Hopkins is a lecturer in the Open Access College, University of Southern Queensland(USQ), and teaches tertiary preparation students, including incarcerated students.

16 H. FARLEY AND S. HOPKINS

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