University programmes and prison governance: insights from Argentina

In 2022, 34 out of the 70 public universities in Argentina had some kind of activities with incarcerated people inside 17 out of their 24 penitentiary systems. As much as it is a extensive experience in the country, there are many differences between those programmes’ origins, developments, and objectives. Within variations, and in different degrees, the universities aim to create productive atmospheres inside Argentine prisons, in which students, faculty, tutors and university coordinators engage in an academic space, building supportive communities. This article seeks to discuss how these programmes intend to practise their presence inside prisons and the impact those different designs produce in prison environments. The involvement of university actors from outside the prison, and the participation of incarcerated students in the discussion about the daily life of prisons, challenge Erving Goffman’s (2001) concept of total institution. Our main findings indicate that the way in which each programme defines its organisational structure, and its presence within the prison, affects the mode and scope of its interventions to modify the prison reality and to get involved in the prison governance, intentionally or unintentionally. This work is part of research conducted in 2022 and 2023 in three university in-prison programmes in Argentina, recovering the experiences and perceptions of different actors: students, faculty and programme managers.