Research activities

The overriding aim of the project is the support of the trainability, career orientation and employability of young prisoners with a special focus on the ability for a self-responsible and nonviolent conduct of life. This general aim of the project becomes concrete by the following sub goals:

  1. Development and testing of low-threshold modular learning opportunities to increase the trainability, career orientation and employability of young prisoners, which are arrested in youth-offenders-departments of the penal system of the state North Rhine-Westphalia and for the reduction of their propensity towards violence.
  2. Creation of transitory structures which enable the commencement or continuation of measures concerning school-leaving qualifications and/or professional qualifications in prisons in NRW or rather after discharge the commencement or continuation in vocational schools or other educational institutions.
  3. Development of a trainings- and qualifications-network for the support and implementation of individualised learning opportunities for teachers in the penal system and in vocational schools.
  4. Development and testing of a group offering concerning a structured sensitisation of the prisoners for the problem "violence in the execution of a prison sentence as well as violence in education and employment measures". A further elaboration of a participant-centred concept for the prevention of violence and a training of multipliers for the realisation of the concept in the penal institutions in NRW is seen as an additional aim.

These targets and areas of responsibility were based on four methodical and overriding principles of individual support:

  • Reflexive orientation of strength The planned measures should be orientated by the strengths of the prisoners in order to quickly achieve motivating learning successes.
  • Authenticity and closeness to reality The planned learning processes should not be shortened to the communicating of conceptual and functional issues but rather they should be orientated on the real working and living environments of the learners.
  • Individualisation Learning in youth defenders departments should be orientated on individual problems and it should be controlled by learners independently step by step.
  • Cooperation The learners are not only viewed as objects in specific learning environments but they are invited to actively shape these and to engage in a process of communication.
Contacts

Scientific supervision

Prof. Dr. H.-Hugo Kremer

Prof. Dr. Marc Beutner

Information

Dipl.-Hdl. Marcel Gebbe

Heike Kundisch, M.A.                                                               

Funding sources

Bundesministerium für Arbeit und Soziales

Funding sources

Europäischer Sozialfonds für Deutschland