Criminología dentro y fuera de prisión: Cruce de caminos

There is a school of thought in criminology, little known in our context, called “Convict Criminology.” As explained by its international organization, it arose from the frustration of students and professors who had been imprisoned for certain crimes related to drug trafficking or protests in the turbulent 1970s in the Anglo-Saxon world. The members of Convict Criminology, with their lived experience within the criminal justice system, reformulated some of their assumptions and also collaborated with people in prison to better understand how we can improve the criminal justice system.

Convict Criminology (CC) held its first session at the American Society of Criminology (ASC) in 1997, when the first academic works began to appear, joined by convicted individuals who, after entering prison, carried out research and, subsequently, academic activities in various countries.

This Summer Course is based on a question that, during a visit to a closed juvenile detention center, a juvenile inmate asked the criminology students from the University of the Basque Country: “Do you spend four years studying why people commit crimes? I already know why I committed mine.” Starting from the assumption that the question and the answer are more complex than they appear, in this new edition of the summer course for inmates, we will engage in a participatory discussion, in a circle of dialogue, between inmates and criminology students, also with the participation of some victims, on the causes of different types of crime and ways of repairing and preventing them, while also addressing the role of academic education in prison and how we can continue to learn and collaborate at this crossroads between experts from different sides, but always from a horizontal perspective that is respectful, open to knowledge and human rights ethics, and questioning of assumptions.