The primary source that will be examined in this paper is the article Prison Education: Effects of Vocational Education on Rehabilitation, written in 1986 by Réal Boulianne, who was a researcher at McGill University, along with her colleague Claire Meunier, who was stationed at Université de Montréal. The article explains both Boulianne and Meunier’s research on the effects of prison education and its relation to recidivism. The paper is a follow-up study of former inmates who had completed a vocational programme in federal penitentiaries in Québec1.
To begin with the analysis of the document you must address the weakness’ and minor flaws that have occurred in the article. Having both of the researchers from Québec, along with only doing their study inside of the province of Québec can create some discrepancies when looking at their data collected. It is hard to make an assumption that inmates benefit from the prison’s education programs while only looking at a sample taken from one province in Canada. There are 10,000 inmates that are held in the 59 federal penitentiaries across all of Canada, and of these 10,000 they only studied 99 of these individuals all of which were housed in the Quebec federal prison1. This relates to how the document is revealing of just how low the federal population of Canadian prisons were in the 1980’s compared to the population in them today. Boulianne and Meunier wrote this document in 1986 after successfully completing their research on the topic. When looking at this paper written over 30 years ago you can tell that prison systems were just becoming something big. Prison education was just beginning to happen as people were becoming more focused and involved in what they wanted to do with their lives after they were released from prison. Another issue with this document is that they only focused on individuals who had completed a vocational programme from the years 1980 to 1983. This is a short time period which means that people may have known the others that participated in the programs. This could cause biased results if the inmates kept in contact with the individuals they lived with in prison. Boulianne and Meunier also state that it was hard to find the inmates to ask them about their experiences with prison education because ex-inmates want to sever all ties with correctional institutions and lose themselves in the anonymity of society as soon as they can1. Which means that the data they have collected could be unreliable due to the lack of individuals that participated in the study.
With the few weakness’ that Boulianne and Meunier encountered in their article, they had many strengths in their paper as well. One of the most important strength of the research was its specificity to the themes they wanted to derive from the study. They outlined seven specific themes that they wanted to stick with when creating their research questions, which means the data is all reliable to what they set out to accomplish. They also were to establish the reasons for why these inmates took the programs, which supports their thesis that individuals took these programs to reduce their chance of recidivism. Of the various reasons given by the former inmates for registering in educational programmes the one mentioned Most often was that it improved conditions of incarceration. Secondly, others felt that it was viewed favorably by the authorities and seemed to improve chances for an early release. The next reason cited was that education helped to prepare them for their eventual release in as much as learning a trade and acquiring work experience were seen as improving chances of finding employment Finally, a few of the former inmates said they registered in a programme simply out of interest in the subject1. Throughout all of the interviews that took place during this time, there was only two negative comments on the programs themselves. The first one being that someone advanced in the topic was not able to advance as rapidly as he would like to, and the other being that they felt the practical components of the programmes did not always correspond to the realities of actual working conditions in the industry1. This is a major win for the researchers because it is supporting their idea that the prison education programs were an important part of the recidivism of inmates in the federal prisons. Boulianne and Meunier found that over 70% of the individuals they interviewed had set jobs after they took the programs when they were in prison, whether or not it was in the same field of study the took in prison. This is extremely important to consider because there may be a correlation between the education programs and how well individuals do once they are released from prisons. This then can be related to whether prison education systems are a sign of social control or social concern. It doesn’t matter whether or not inmates use the knowledge they have gained from inside prison; they have been shaped to behave a certain way when they are a functioning citizen of society.
Prison education programs are not cheap; they require an abundance of time and money. There are people working around the clock to try and make sure the individuals that are taking these programs are getting everything the need to be successful in their future endeavors. During the 1980’s prison wasn’t something the average individual thought too much about. The prison systems were hidden, letting the imagination of individuals who had never been on the inside wonder. The authors made it clear that they believed creating educational programs would benefit individuals after they left the prisons. Relating how prison education happened in the past and its benefits/disadvantages can help future researches to improving the chance of ex-inmates coming back into the prison institutionalizations. Although the programs themselves were voluntary for the inmates to complete, the government was pushing for the inmates to take them and prisoners were being stigmatized when they did not want to be involved in the programs. There had been much controversy on the benefits of education in prisons, because many individuals were upset about the cost of these programs. Yet with all the backlash that the prison systems had in the past, and that they still encounter today, Boulianne and Meunier set out to prove that these educational programs that have been established for the inmates at the federal prison in Quebec are in fact beneficial and should be implemented throughout all of Canada; and that is exactly what their data proves in their article Prison Education: Effects of Vocational Education on Rehabilitation.
References:
Boulianne, Réal, and Meuneir, Claire. “Prison Education: Effects of Vocational Education on  Rehabilitation.” McGill Journal of Education 21, no. 3 (1986): 217-228.