Being Adolescent Inmates in Juvenile Penal Institutions During the Pandemic

Reflections on the Loss of the Relational Dimension in the (Re)Educational Journey

Abstract

At the time of the pandemic, one of the life contexts that underwent collective silence was the penitentiary. Time in prison is time dedicated to re-education, to the possibility of developing knowledge and skills that can offer a new perspective through which to look at one's role in the world. In adolescence, a prison sentence is an extreme measure which aims precisely to attempt to give an educational and life-changing response, through cultural, artistic and scholastic activities. Contact with the world of education in a broad sense, and school more specifically, allows adolescents in prison to enter into dynamics with significant adults and experience valuable teaching-learning processes, particularly through the educational relationship and the emotional skills that characterize it. During the pandemic this delicate re-educational process came to a halt and along with it all the various relational dimensions, leaving adolescents in a state of deep emotional deprivation and painful isolation. If what has happened cannot be changed, it can be a reason for reflection to re-read the value of affectivity in relationships and start to define a new way of building educational dynamics again from here.

Keywords: Pandemic and isolation in prison, affection in the educational relationship, learning-teaching processes in prison