The impact of incarceration on young offenders' access to quality education in Malawi's penitentiary facilities

Abstract

There is a dearth of research on incarcerated young offenders‘ access to education in African penitentiaries. This study was aimed at investigating how the incarceration of young offenders impacts on their rights and access to quality education in Malawi. Guided by Good Lives Model, Risk Needs Responsivity, systems and Marxist theories as the theoretical framework, the study adopted a mixed-methods research approach in the pragmatic research paradigm, utilising a convergent design. The study involved 340 participants at five young offenders‘ facilities. The first phase involved the randomly selected 290 incarcerated young offenders in a semi-structured survey for descriptive quantitative data collection. In the second qualitative interviews phase, 27 young offenders and 25 educators and officials were purposively selected. Additionally, 25 ex-young offenders were selected using quota and snowball sampling techniques. The study also used the researcher's observations to triangulate survey and interview results. The qualitative data was analysed using narrative and qualitative content analysis approaches, while quantitative data was analysed using the SPSS (v. 22) descriptive statistical tools. The key finding of this study was that the incarceration of school-aged young offenders negatively affected their rights and access to quality education in Malawi. This conclusion was arrived at because the study found that most young offenders had academic and psychosocial problems that were not adequately addressed during their incarceration due to the absence of individualised comprehensive rehabilitation programming that includes education. Secondly, even though education was highly perceived as the most meaningful existing programme at the five facilities, 76% of the incarcerated school-aged young people (N=753) were not enrolled in any education programme, mainly due to some facilities‘ coercive farming activities. The trend was also attributed to the inadequacy of resources, the inmates' lack of educational interest and motivation, and the absence of education at one male facility and female sections. Finally, the study found that due to a lack of post-release support, the schooling plans of many ex-inmates were generally shattered. In light of the challenges, this study proposed a seven-phase rehabilitation framework applicable in developing countries to guide young offenders‘ incarceration, and made some policy recommendations.