Stories4Wings and the Power of Prison Education

“Imprisonment gives off an unpleasant smell. Remnants of macerating evil thoughts, the effluvia of dirty ideas that have been hanging around too long, the bitter whiff of old regrets. Fresh air, by definition, never enters here.” writes Jean-Paul Dubois in Not Everybody Lives the Same Way^[1]. In fact, the concept of imprisonment implies a closed environment.

Nevertheless, prisoners are citizens, who, sooner or later, are meant to reintegrate society. Facilitating their reinsertion addresses issues of respect of democracy, inclusion, freedom and society. That is what the project Stories4Wings is about : educating adults in prison using the power of stories to help them develop key skills for reinsertion.

There is a wide scientific consensus that prison education is vital on the resocialization of prisoners^[2]. However, prisoners are often marginalised in their access to education because of the difficult implementations of training, and because of the lack of previous education they might bear.

That is the innovation of Stories4Wings, a project part of Erasmus+ program “Stories that sew wings”^[3] and co-funded by the European Union. By using story-based methodology instead of traditional teaching, inmates develop social and emotional skills fostering empathy and reflecting on their own emotions. This method also appears to be more motivational, a quality sometimes lacking in traditional education.

^[1] Dubois Jean-Paul, Not Everybody Lives the Same Way, Editions de l’Olivier, 14/08/2019

^[2] Sigifredo Castell-Britton. (2024). The Effectiveness of Prison Education in Reducing Criminal Recidivism: A Systematic Review. Qeios. doi:10.32388/CCWB9Y.

^[3] Erasmus+ Project “Stories that sew wings 2024-1-ESO-KA220-ADU-000255317”