Effects of Educational Motives on Prisoners’ Participationin Education and Educational Desires

Terje Manger & Ole-Johan Eikeland & Arve Asbjørnsen

Published online: 7 October 2012# Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht 2012

Abstract There are numerous individual and social benefits of increasing prisoners’ edu-cational motivation and their level of education. During incarceration they can be motivatedto consider education because of the value of education, their own resettlement, future jobprospects, to break free from prison routines, or simply to be around others. The aim of thepresent study was to examine the relationship between prisoners’ educational motives andtheir participation in education or desires to start an education in prison. The participantswere 750 prisoners who attended prison education in Norwegian prisons in 2009, plus 898other prisoners. Three motive categories were identified: “Future planning”, “Social reasonsand escapism”, and “Competence building” (learning for the sake of learning). The firstfactor explained more than twice of the variance of the sum of the two others. Prisoners withhigh scores in the competence building category were significantly more prone to participatein education in prison, also when other commonly used background variables were con-trolled for statistically. Among those who did not participate, high scores in competencebuilding also predicted that they desired to start an education while incarcerated. Prisonerswith high scores in the future planning category were less likely to participate in prisoneducation. We then discuss why this latter somewhat surprising negative effect occurred.

Keywords Educational desires . Educational motives . Prison education

Eur J Crim Policy Res (2013) 19:245–257DOI 10.1007/s10610-012-9187-x

T. Manger : O.-J. Eikeland : A. AsbjørnsenBergen Cognition and Learning Group, University of Bergen, Bergen, Norway

T. Manger (*)Department of Psychosocial Science, University of Bergen, Post Box 7800, 5020 Bergen, Norwaye-mail: Terje.Manger@psysp.uib.no

O.-J. EikelandEikeland Research and Teaching, Bergen, Norway

A. AsbjørnsenDepartment of Biological and Medical Psychology, University of Bergen, Bergen, Norway

Effects of Educational Motives on Prisoners’ Participation in Educationand Educational Desires

There are a number of strong reasons for providing educational activities for prisoners.Education is recognized as a basic human need and as a human right, also for prisoners (e.g.the European Convention on Human Rights, the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child,and the UNESCO Recommendations on Adult Education). It is also recognized thateducation has a value in itself and that it is important to develop the person as a whole.From a socioeconomic point of view, educational shortcomings, resulting in poor opportu-nities on the labour marked, make individuals who have served time in prison dependent onwelfare benefits, thus increasing the burden of society (e.g. Lochner and Moretti 2004).

From the personal and social perspectives, a weak educational background and lowemployment opportunities increase the risk of recidivism and harmful behaviour, such asuse of illegal narcotics, overconsumption of alcohol, and violence (e.g. Steurer and Smith2003). Both Chapell (2004), in her meta-analysis based on studies carried out between 1990and 1999, and Wells (2000), in a meta-analysis based on studies carried out between 1987and 2000, show that education in prison has a moderate but significant positive effect onrecidivism. Likewise, Batchelder and Pippert (2002) reveal that crime and recidivism areinversely related to the educational attainment of the individual. Moreover, Nuttall et al.(2003) show that prisoners who attend educational programs which leads to a high schoolequivalent diploma are less likely to return to prison following their release and thatprisoners under 21 years benefit more from attending such programs than older prisoners.Thus, several studies provide research-based ground, beyond the legal and humanistic ones,for being concerned with educational background, motives and needs of prisoners.

The Nordic countries also have a basic consensus concerning human treatment of prison-ers, in which education plays a major role. Given common interpretation of education law inNorway, prisoners are entitled to access to education in the same manner as other citizensand residents. This implies 7 years of mandatory primary school (age 6–13), 3 years ofmandatory lower secondary school (age 13–16), and 3 years of upper secondary school (age16–19), which is not mandatory and has three branches (general, mercantile, and vocational).Prisons in Norway have adopted the so-called import model (Christie 1970) for delivery ofservices to the prisoners (i.e. the normal school system supplies educational services inprison). Recent studies reveal that more than half of the prisoners in Norway desire tocontinue their formal education (Hetland et al. 2007; Manger et al. 2010). Prisoners’ motivesfor pursuing education are in part to be differentiated from motives in the more generalpopulation (e.g. Costelloe 2003; Forster 1990). In light of this, it is important to gainunderstanding into the role of prisoners’ motives in their participation or non-participationin educational programs.

According to Forster (1990), the initial impetus to join an educational activity in prisonseems to be tied up with instructional considerations that apply only rarely outside prisons.Studies show that prisoners having education are reasonably well-motivated (Diseth et al.2008; Manger et al. 2006). Some of the motives for starting an education are unique to theprison context; they emerge from a need to escape from mind-numbing prison life, oralternatively, to prepare for life upon release (Costelloe 2003; Parson and Lagerback1993). According to such findings education is not always attractive in itself, but prisonersmay take up education to avoid such alternatives as prison work or prison routines.Likewise, Skaalvik et al. (2003) identified one broad category of prisoners who startededucation to avoid aspects of prison life as opposed to seeking out education as an activity initself. Prisoners in another broad category were much more concerned with the value of

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education, their own resettlement, and future job prospects. In a recent study among prison-ers, involving all those who participated in education, three motive categories were identi-fied (Manger et al. 2010): “To prepare for life upon release”, “social reasons and reasonsunique to the prison context”, and “to acquire knowledge and skills”. The first motivecategory explained more of the variance than the sum of the other factors. Further, educa-tional level was not related to scores on this first factor.

Prisoners vary in terms of gender, age, length of incarceration, and former educationallevel. These are variables that may influence participation in prison education or desires tostart an education. Such variables need to be controlled for when the effects of motives arebeing examined. At the time of writing the present paper, a search in the databases Eric,PsychINFO, and Google Scholar revealed few studies investigating the relations betweengender or age and participation in prison education or desires to do so. Significant genderdifferences favouring females were, however, found in studies of educational level, andfemales in prison had more often completed higher education than men (Eikeland andManger 2004). This gender-related difference reflects a corresponding difference outsideprison in Norway as well: the proportion of women and men in higher education is 60/40(Statistics Norway 2012). It may also reflect the fact that women are, on average, older thanmen when they violate the law, and have therefore had time to complete more education.There is good support for this interpretation in the international research literature (e.g.Chesney-Lind and Sheldon 1998; Talbott and Thiede 1999). On the other hand, females’higher age and educational level may also indicate that they do not see the need for moreeducation, compared to younger prisoners and those with low education. In contrast to someof the referred findings, Ellis et al. (2008) reported that female prisoners in the US are likelyto be poor, undereducated, and single parents. Although the findings are inconsistent, genderneeds to be controlled for. In contrast, age seems to influence participation, while youngprisoners, with less completed education than older ones, do see the incarceration period as agood chance in life to resume and complete education, or simply to be in the company ofothers (Manger et al. 2010).

In Norway the longest possible sentence is 21 years, 70 % of those who are serving asentence more than 74 days are released after 2/3 time (J.-E. Sandlie, Ministry of Justice,personal communication, January 11, 2012). The overall incarceration time, per prisoner, is141 days (Ministry of Justice 2011). However, when a person has committed a serious crimeand the court considers that it is a high risk of reoffending, the sentence can be extended upto 5 years at a time (preventive detention), with an absolute maximum extension of 21 years.

The short overall incarceration time has been shown to influence prisoners’ proclivitiesfor furthering their education while serving their time (Eikeland et al. 2009). Prisoners withshort sentences find it less worthwhile to start education compared to those with longersentences. An important reason may be that they perceive education in traditional “schoolterms”, and do not see that education can entail shorter courses or an opportunity to continueeducation after release. Another important reason may be that the educational programs inseveral prisons are not planned for those with shorter sentences. On the other hand, prisonerswith sentences of over 5 years were more likely than those with shorter sentences to starteducation in prison, in order to prepare for life after release (Manger et al. 2010).

Both Costelloe (2003) and Forster (1990) found a relation between educational level andeducational motivation. The educationally disadvantaged prisoners were motivated more byattempts to escape from prison routines, rather than desire for education itself. In contrast,the better educated were positive from the start; they used the opportunities to upgrade theirqualifications while in prison. The better-educated prisoners saw education as a way tomanage prison life, and also as a mean to particular goals, such as learning for the sake of

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learning. But overall, extrinsic factors that were seen as related to quality of life appeared tobe the driving forces. One can conclude tentatively that motives related to clear intentionshave a positive effect on actual participation, while motives that are not intertwined in clearintentions are less related to actual participation.

In line with former studies, motives for joining educational programs in prison can bedivided into the general areas of 1) intrinsic motives or relevance to post-prison employ-ment, and 2) motives in which individual decisions is of less importance. Further studies canincrease our understanding of how to adapt educational programs to different needs anddifferent categories of prisoners. Such information is relevant to policy making, servicedevelopment, planning and deployment of resources, and teaching. The present study, whichincludes practically all prisoners in all Norwegian prisons, represents a comprehensiveestimate of the impact of educational motives on educational participation and educationaldesires among those who do not yet participate.

Research Questions

Most of the literature summarized above indicates that educational decisions among prison-ers are based on various motives, which can be both intrinsic and extrinsic. Incarceratedindividuals can have a desire to start an education for the sake of learning or be motivated byforces apart from education itself, such as future concerns (e.g. a job or a desire to avoidcrime). They can also be motivated by escaping from something less desirable, such as theunpleasant routines of prison life, boredom, or a desire to be with others in school. Prisoneducation authorities and prison teachers need to be knowledgeable of the factors that canresult in participation in education and that can produce a better platform for enhancinglearning.

In the present study we will investigate how prisoners’ educational motives are related toeducational participation and their desires to start education in prison. We assume thatmotives related to preparation for life upon release, and learning as intrinsic (learning forthe sake of learning) will be significant predictors of educational participation and educa-tional desires. In contrast, the motives to escape prison life, or to simply seek the company ofothers, should not be strong predictors. Further, prisoners’ gender, age, educational level,and sentence length may influence their educational participation and desires. One canassume that younger prisoners, previously well qualified ones, and those with long sentencesare more likely than older prisoners, educationally disadvantaged prisoners, and those withshort sentences, respectively, to participate or have a desire to start an education. Someformer studies indicate an educational advantage favouring females (Eikeland and Manger2004), but the findings internationally are inconsistent, and no clear expectations aboutparticipation in education or educational desires can be drawn. Young people may, on theother hand, see better chances to succeed in life when education is completed, and it isnormally easier to complete education early in life. Later, people may see age as a hindrance,and also feel that (more) education is unnecessary or not worth the effort. The effects ofprisoners’ former educational level on participation and on their desires to participate havebeen found to be equivocal, but the quality of the better-educated prisoners educationalmotives (Costelloe 2003) may have a positive effect on participation in education and desiresto start and education. Sentence length is also assumed to have an impact on actualparticipation and on educational desires. The recent Norwegian study (Manger et al. 2010)of educational motives showed that prisoners with sentences of over 5 years were morelikely than those with short sentences to start education in prison in order to prepare for lifeupon release.

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To summarize, variables such as gender, age, educational level, and sentence length need tobe controlled for, as they can also relate to educational participation and desires for education.Prognostic information about educational motives and related variables is important because itcan be used to tailor educational programs and educational support for prisoners.

Methods

Participants

The participants were part of a target group that included all 3359 prisoners over 18 years ofage in Norwegian prisons. They were contacted between May 4th and May 11th of 2009(only nine prisoners in Norway were under 18 years of age at that time). Prisoners who werenot present in that week (e.g. illness, temporary leave, presence in court) were not included(3238 were finally contacted). Of those who received the whole survey, 2065 persons, or63.7 %, responded. For the present article 1648 prisoners who completed the educationalmotives part of the survey, were included. Of them 750 attended education and 898 did not.

Ninety-four percent of those who received the survey were men. According to govern-ment figures at the week of data collection, 6 % of all prisoners in Norwegian prisons werefemales. Of the respondents 7.4 % were females. According to the same government figures,27.8 % were non-Norwegian citizens. Of the respondents 33.5 % self-reported that they werenot born in Norway, and they were representing 95 countries. Thus, the non-Norwegianprisoners are probably somewhat overrepresented in the study. The mean age of the prison-ers in the study was 34.7 years.

The Questionnaire

The questionnaire for the prisoners contained several questions directed to educationalbackground, participation in education, educational desires, and educational motives. Thepart of the survey that contained formal educational background listed seven options thatcould be categorized into 1) have not completed any education, 2) have completed compul-sory school (primary and lower secondary school), 3) have completed 1 year of uppersecondary school, 4) have completed 2 years of upper secondary school, 5) have completed3 years of upper secondary school, 6) have completed single courses at a university or otherhigher education, and 7) have completed a degree from a university or have had other highereducation. The questionnaire also contained questions about age, sex, and sentence length.

Of particular interest was an educational motives questionnaire developed by Skaalvikand colleagues (Skaalvik et al. 2003), which was used in a former Norwegian study (Mangeret al. 2010). It was modified for the present purpose to cover both those prisoners who hadattended education in prison and those who had not. The prisoners were presented with 15possible reasons for starting an educational program in prison, and indicated how importanteach of these reasons was for them. Some of the items referred to motives related to avoidingaspects of prison life (e.g. “Because it is better than working in prison” or “To make servingtime easier”), and other items referred to preparation for life upon release or learning for thesake of learning (e.g. “To make it easier to get a job after I’m released” or “To satisfy mydesire to learn”). Each item had four response categories (“not important”, “less important”,“important”, and “very important”—coded 1 to 4). The items in the Skaalvik et al. (2003)questionnaire had only three response categories. For the questions included in the presentpaper, respondents were asked to tick the appropriate box or boxes. The questionnaire was

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available in both Norwegian and English, and one earlier version was tested in a pilot amongprisoners in one prison.

Ethics and Procedure

The study was approved by the Regional Committee for Medical and Health ResearchEthics, Western Norway, and by the Ombudsman for Privacy in Research, Norwegian SocialScience Data Services.

The County Governor of Hordaland, Department of Education, is the organization in chargeof Norwegian prison education, serving the Ministry of Education. A representative of theCounty Governor was a central figure here. He telephoned each prison governor and eachheadmaster in charge of prison education, in order to outline the purpose of the study and toarrange for the assessment to be carried out. In addition, a letter was sent to the same persons,explaining the procedures. In line with instructions from the research group, the prison governorof each prison or the teacher in charge of education carried out the survey. The front page of thequestionnaire explained the purpose and procedure, and emphasized that participation wasvoluntary. To ensure that participants did not provide information that could be perceived asinfluencing their incarceration, it was explicitly stated that the information provided would beconfidential and that individual information would not be used by the prison authorities. In linewith ethical recommendations, prisoners were not provided with incentives, as this would haveplaced pressure on them to reply. Those who had reading and writing problems, or who werenot fluent in either English or Norwegian, were offered assistance by prison teachers or prisonofficers in completing the questionnaire. In addition, based on a demand from the ethical board,the participants were also told that they could ask visiting friends or family members forassistance in filling out the questionnaire.

Results

As described in the method section, respondents were presented with 15 possible reasons forstarting an educational program in prison, and indicated how important each of these reasons wasfor them. The answers on the educational motive questionnaire were factor analyzed, usingprincipal axis factoring analysis for the extraction of factors with oblique rotation.While principalcomponent analysis and varimax rotation are often chosen as a data reduction technique, principalaxis factoring with oblique rotation is generally the best option for producing a factor structure(Russel 2002). This procedure allows for correlated factors, which is often a more accuratedescription of the data, although this also may give a more complex interpretation of the factorsolution. The eigenvalue above-one criterion produced three factors, which accounted for 48.6 %of the variance. These factors were labeled “Future planning” (Factor 1), “Social reasons andescapism” (Factor 2), and “Competence building” (Factor 3). The factors had initial eigenvaluesof 6.4 (Factor 1), 1.9 (Factor 2), and 1.1 (Factor 3). They accounted for 42.6, 12.7, and 7.3 %of the variance, respectively. Thus, Factor 1 may be considered as the most well-definedcompared to the other factors. While the eigenvalue above-one criterion should not be trustedalone (Cooper 2002), additional evidence in terms of visual inspection of the scree plot(Cattell 1966) showed a marked change of slope (Tabachnick and Fidell 2007) after the thirdfactor, in accordance with theoretical assumptions (Manger et al. 2010).

According to the guidelines for identifying significant factor loadings based on samplesize (Hair et al. 1995), six items, five items, and four items, respectively, were considered inthe interpretation of the first, second, and third factor (Table 1).

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The analysis of the factor correlations yielded positive correlations between Factor 1 andFactor 2 (r00.44), Factor 1 and Factor 3 (r00.59), and Factor 2 and Factor 3 (r00.36). In orderto study educational motives as predictors of prisoners’ participation in education, three indiceswere computed by adding prisoners’ scores on the items that loaded significantly highly on eachof the factors, divided by the number of items included in each factor. This gave an averagescore of between 1 (“not important”) and 4 (“very important”)—equivalent to the originalvalues of the items included. The indices were named “future planning”, “social-reasons andescapism” and “competence building”. The correlations between the indices (sum of the itemsthat loaded significantly highly on each factor) were .51 (future planning and social reasons andescapism), .66 (future planning and competence building), and .42 (social reasons and escapismand competence building), respectively. An inspection of the scatter plot showed that there wereno prisoners with a low score on the competence building scale and a high score on the futureplanning scale, indicating that the correlation is not linear. Cronbach’s alpha coefficients were0.87, 0.81, and 0.80 for the future planning index, the social and escapism index, and thecompetence building index, respectively.

In order to study educational motives as predictors of prisoners’ participation in education, alogistic regression analysis was conducted. In the regression we controlled for commonly usedbackground variables that could influence participation in education (gender, age, educationallevel, sentence length). Prisoners’ participation in education (code 1) or not (code 0) wasentered as a dependent variable. The indices of the items that loaded significantly highly on thecorrelated factors were entered as independent variables. Gender (females00; males01), age(a continuous variable), sentence length (10under 3 months; 203–12 months; 301–5 years;40more than 5 years), and educational level (00no education; 10primary school and lowersecondary school; 20upper secondary education; 30at least some university or college) wereentered as control variables. Table 2 shows the impact of each independent variable onprisoners’ participation in education, given that all other variables were controlled for.

Table 1 Reasons to start an education in prison. Structure matrix. Principal axis factoring, oblique rotated.N01648

Reasons Factor 1 Factor 2 Factor 3 Initial communalities

To be better able to cope with life after release 0.82 0.37 0.48 0.61

To make it easier to avoid committing crime 0.79 0.42 0.40 0.57

To make it easier to get a job after release 0.70 0.24 0.26 0.48

To pass exams or improve a previous grade 0.70 0.34 0.51 0.51

To make this educational program a bridge to moreeducation after release

0.69 0.44 0.55 0.49

To improve my self-esteem 0.68 0.53 0.51 0.52

Because I wanted to be part of the social environmentat the school

0.44 0.73 0.39 0.48

To get more freedom during the day 0.27 0.71 0.23 0.43

To be encouraged to do so 0.45 0.70 0.29 0.45

Because friends are going to school 0.28 0.69 0.20 0.39

Because it is better than working in prison 0.30 0.60 0.33 0.33

To spend my time doing something sensible and useful 0.52 0.24 0.77 0.49

To learn about a subject 0.64 0.28 0.73 0.55

To satisfy my desire to learn 0.52 0.32 0.73 0.48

To make serving time easier 0.36 0.43 0.60 0.36

Prisoners’ Educational Motives 251

As Table 2 shows, gender and educational level had no significant relation to prisoners’participation in education. Age, however, had a statistically significant negative impact. Theodds ratio is 0.98, which shows that the chances of participating in education decreaseslightly with increasing age. Sentence length had a significant positive effect on participationin education. The odds ratio, Exp(B)02.01, indicates that longer sentences increase the oddsof participation in education. The index competence building significantly predicted startingeducation while incarcerated, Exp(B)02.08, i.e. the odds of starting an education in prisonincrease with increasing scores on this motive index. The future planning index, however,had a significant negative impact on participation in education, Exp(B)0−0.73: Starting aneducation decreases with increasing scores on this index. The social and escapism index hadno significant relation to participation in education.

Further analyses showed that the negative effect of the future planning index on partic-ipation occurred especially for prisoners who were incarcerated for less than 12 months,B0−0.42, Exp(B)00.66, p<.01, but not for those who were incarcerated longer. Like-wise, the future planning index had a significant negative effect on participation ineducation only for respondents over 34 years old, B0−0.46, Exp(B)00.63, p<.00.

Another logistic regression analysis was then conducted, including only those who didnot participate in education. For this analysis, the focus was on desire to begin educationwhileincarcerated. The same independent variables as in the former analysis were included, but forthis analysis the variable “desire to start an education in prison” (code 1) or not (code 0) wasincluded as the dependent variable. Gender, age and educational level had no significantimpact on the educational desires of prisoners who had not started an education in prison, butsentence length had a significant effect (Table 3). The longer the sentence, the more likely it

Table 2 Logistic regression anal-ysis for predictors of prisoners’participation in education. Bothprisoners who participated in edu-cation and who did not participate.N01267

Predictors B Exp(B) Sign.

Gender 0.26 1.31 0.27

Age −0.03 0.98 0.00

Sentence length 0.70 2.01 0.00

Level of education 0.11 1.11 0.17

Preparation for release −0.32 0.73 0.00

Social reasons and escapism −0.11 0.99 0.91

Competence building 0.73 2.08 0.00

Constant −2.49 0.08 0.00

Model χ2/sign. 185.4/.00

Table 3 Logistic regression anal-ysis for predictors of prisoners’desire to start an education inprison. Prisoners who did not par-ticipate in education. N0650

Predictors B Exp(B) Sign.

Gender −0.59 0.55 0.08

Age −0.01 0.99 0.32

Sentence length 0.43 1.53 0.00

Level of education 0.08 1.09 0.48

Preparation for release −0.14 0.87 0.37

Social reasons and escapism −0.06 0.94 0.66

Competence building 1.02 2.76 0.00

Constant −3.29 0.04 0.00

Model χ2/sign. 91.4/.00

252 T. Manger et al.

is that the prisoner desires to participate in education, Exp(B)01.53. The competencebuilding index significantly predicted desire to start an education, in that the education desireincreases with increasing scores on this motive category. The two other motive indices hadno significant effect.

Discussion

Prisoners who attended education in Norwegian prisons, and prisoners who did not partic-ipate in education, were presented with 15 possible reasons for starting an educationalprogram in prison and were asked to indicate how important each of these reasons was forthem. All of this questioning was done during a given week in 2009. A principal axis factoranalysis identified three factors: “Future planning”, “Social reasons and escapism”, and“Competence building”. Several of the items in the factor analysis had cross loadings,especially on the future planning factor and the competence building factor. Although thenumber of cross loadings deviated somewhat from an ideal simple structure, the items hadsufficiently strong loadings on unique factors (Gorsuch 1983). Similar factors and loadingson the factors were identified in a former study among 467 prisoners who, in 2006,participated in prison education in Norway (Manger et al. 2010).

It is reasonable to assume that prisoners who are motivated to engage in education inorder to plan the future or to prepare for life upon release also, to a certain extent, aremotivated by the possibility of competence building or acquiring knowledge and skills.These two motive categories both stem from clear educational intentions, in contrast tomotives that push prisoners towards education because of social reasons or due to a need toget away from something less attractive, such as prison work. Furthermore, the mean scoresof the future planning index and the competence building index were relatively high,compared to the mean score of the social and escapism index.

Taken together, these findings are congruent with the theoretical distinction between“push-factors” and “pull factors”, developed most explicitly within the sociology of educa-tion (e.g. Elster 1979; Gambetta 1987) and used to describe prisoners’ motives to start aneducation (Costelloe 2003; Forster 1990; Manger et al. 2010). According to the push model,educational behaviour follows from causes—social or psychological—that are not clearproducts of individuals’ conscious decisions. The causes push them towards a given courseof action. Likewise, according to theory and research on prison education (Costelloe 2003;Manger et al. 2010), the push model involve forces that act to drive prisoners away fromsomething (e.g. prison work or discipline), this leading them to education. In contrast, thepull model assumes that individuals act purposely in accordance with their intentions. Facedwith multiple options, they will weigh them and choose according to anticipated futurerewards, such as a possible job on release, which may draw prisoners towards education.The pull model also suggests that students’ attraction to studying (learning for the sake oflearning) will strongly influence their decisions.

Of particular interest for the present study was the relationship between prisoners’educational motives and their participation in education. Likewise, for those who did notparticipate in education, the link between the motives and their educational desires was ofinterest. Thus, there were questions directed to participation in education and educationaldesires, in addition to demographical questions such as gender, age, sentence length, andeducational background. In line with our assumptions, motives related to competencebuilding or to learning as an activity in itself (learning for the sake of learning) weresignificant predictors of educational participation and educational desires, given that the

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other two motive indices and gender, age, sentence length, and educational background werecontrolled for. Prisoners with high scores on the competence building index were more likelyto participate in education, and among those who did not yet participate in education thisindex significantly predicted their desire to start an education while in prison. Push motives(Gambetta 1987), expressed as social reasons or a need to escape from something lessattractive, do not predict participation in education or wishing to start an education in prison.

Contrary to what we had assumed, the future planning index had a significant negativeimpact on participation in education, indicating that the likelihood of starting an educationdecreases with increasing scores on this index. There may be several explanations for this.First, we unfortunately do not have information on how much of the sentence the prisonersalready had served. Such information would probably have given us an understanding ofhow the three motive categories vary in importance, depending on how much time prisonershad left to serve. Secondly, the importance of the motives and the prisoners’ perceptions ofthe motives may also vary with age. When age groups were analyzed, the surprise findingwas only significant for prisoners over 34 years old, which may indicate that they can seereasons to care about the future, but that their age inhibit their starting an education. In otherwords, they may generally consider education as important, but now simply as a normativeadvice to others. Thus, it is not considered of importance to themselves anymore, since theyhave finished an education or do not find more education useful. Contrary to this, at youngages one may realize that participating in education is an instrument to a better future forthem when released.

The future planning index also had a significant negative impact on participation in educationonly for prisoners who were incarcerated for less than 12 months, but not for those who wereincarcerated longer. A possible interpretation is that one can have a high score on the futureplanning index, whereby a short sentence makes it less likely to start an education. A lot ofprisoners in the Nordic countries have relatively short sentences, and a former study (Eikeland etal. 2009) revealed that many of them do not consider it worth the effort to start an educationduring this short period. Theremay also be a third and structural explanation for this. Norwegianprisoners generally express satisfaction with the education provided, but they also express aneed for more vocationally- and professionally-oriented courses (Eikeland et al. 2009). Thus,they may be motivated to start an education, but have not yet got the chance because the accessto the sort of education they need is limited.

In line with our assumptions, the length of the sentence had an impact on both partici-pation in education and educational desires. The longer sentences the prisoners had, themore likely they were to participate in education. Further, they were also more likely thanothers to say that they wanted to start an education in prison. In the present study this meansthat, for example, the odds ratio that a person who is sentenced to 3 to 12 months in prisonhas started an education while incarcerated is doubled compared to one who is in prison forless than 3 months. Likewise, the odds ratio is doubled for a person who is in prison for morethan 5 years compared to one who is there for 1 to 5 years.

Such results may be affected by the relatively short sentences in Norway and by the waysentence length was categorized in the questionnaire. More than 50 % of the prisoners werein prison for less than 3 months. Although they have a right to education, they may, due totheir short sentences, be less likely to consider education as a realistic opportunity. Likewise,the prison education staff may not put much effort in motivating them to start an education.While many of the prisoners with short sentences are young, this possible “alliance” betweenthe prisoners and the staff, leading to a drop out from education, can have negativeconsequences for prisoners’ further educational careers. At the other end of the scale, thecategory “more than 5 years” represented the longest sentence length included in the

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questionnaire. For many prisoners, 5 years makes it possible to plan an education and still beable to use the education for employment purposes when released. Thus, this finding cannotbe extended to prison education in more punishing societies. Especially long sentences canbe de-motivating for education as the prisoners see no opportunities for using that education.

Gender had no significant impact on educational participation or educational desires, butage had a significant influence on participation. The chance of participating decreasedslightly with increasing age. However, when the analysis was conducted for those whodid not participate in prison education, age had no significant effect on wishing to start aneducation. The prisoners’ educational level had no significant impact in any of the analyses.

The above result may be explained by two contrasting tendencies: 1) Approximately20 % of the prisoners have completed upper secondary education, and approximately 14 %have completed some tertiary (higher) education. Prisoners who have already completed aneducation program, or have completed some higher education, may have reason not to startnew education or may not think that they need to take up education when incarcerated. 2) Onthe other hand, the previously educationally disadvantaged prisoners may see new opportu-nities to finally get an education, which may not have been possible on the outside—due tosuch factors as lack of interest, low academic self-concept, behaviour problems, drugproblems, drop out, and negative social comparison. According to social comparison theoryand the frame of reference hypothesis (Festinger 1954; Marsh 1987; Manger and Eikeland1997), the importance of academic achievement for self-concept lies not in the absolute levelof achievement, but rather, in the students’ perception of their level of achievement com-pared with the achievement of those in their comparison group. Behind bars, prisoners surelyfind other standards of comparison than on the outside. In a former study (Manger et al.2006), prisoners who had reading and writing problems were more likely to report that theywished to start upper secondary education relative to those who had no such problems. Thiswould indicate that they see new opportunities, and that they may see different standards ofcomparison than outside prison.

Implications and Limitations

There is research-based support for the conviction that prison education reduces recidivism(Batchelder and Pippert 2002; Chapell 2004; Nuttall et al. 2003; Steurer and Smith 2003;Wells 2000) and that education benefits society more generally in reducing the socioeco-nomic costs associated with crime (Lochner and Moretti 2004). This makes it essential toprovide necessary education for people at risk of becoming involved in criminality, and toensure that individuals already in prison have educational options that can contribute to anew start for them after release.

A practical implication of the present study is that prison educators should developappropriate and realistic responses to the various educational needs of the prisoners. Inparticular, prison teachers need to be aware of the challenges pored by prisoners who aremotivated to participate in order to avoid negative features of prison life, or be around others,or simply to “do something”. The teachers need to be knowledgeable of the factors that canresult in a transformation of these prisoners’ motives, from those rooted in reasons unique tothe prison context to motives that can produce a better platform for enhancing learning. Forthe prison education system also there is a need to remove obstacles preventing prisonersfrom being involved in education, such as limitations due to short sentences and limitedvocationally courses.

A limitation of the study is that we only asked the prisoners about the length of thesentence, not about their time remaining. The latter could have influenced their participation

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in education and their desire to start an education. Another limitation is that, for some of thevariables, we relied on retrospective self-reports, and there was no corroborative informationsuch as official records on educational background and sentence length. Furthermore, it wasnot possible to track prisoners after their release to examine their social interactions andwhether they managed to use their motivation to secure further education or employment.Future studies should compare prisoners’ motivation in prison and upon their release. Itwould also be useful to study peer interactions and community contacts following release,because such interactions represent contextual factors that should increase or decreasemotivation for education. Finally, these findings are based on a single Norwegian prisonpopulation and the extension of our findings to prison populations in less liberal societies, orsocieties that practice longer sentences, are not known.

Acknowledgments The study was initiated and supported by the County Governor of Hordaland, theDepartment of Education, Norway. We would like to thank senior adviser Torfinn Langelid at the CountyGovernor’s office, the headmasters of the prison schools, and the prison governors, who organized the datacollection. Most important, we are also grateful to the prisoners who participated. We totally depended on theirparticipation and collaboration in carrying out this research. Finally, we thank Robert A. Wicklund for helpfulcomments on the manuscript. A preliminary report of some of these results has been published by the CountyGovernor of Hordaland in June, 2010.

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