The Catholic University of Lublin (KUL) has been providing education for people deprived of liberty for more than 10 years. Since 2022 known as the KUL Study Centre at the Remand Prison in Lublin, the initiative is aimed at people not only in the Lublin detention centre, but also in other correctional facilities across Poland. From the new academic year there will be 23 new students.

“Twenty-three inmates from penitentiary institutions from all over Poland have been enrolled for the studies run by the university at the Remand Prison in Lublin in the 2023/24 academic year. 11 will start bachelor’s studies, 12 master’s studies, and we have altogether 29 students in the remaining years”, informed the rector of the Catholic University of Lublin, Rev. Prof. Mirosław Kalinowski.

According to the Catholic University of Lublin, students-inmates starting studies in family sciences, specialisation in the assistant of a dependent person (bachelor studies) and specialisation in the animation of the social environment (complementary master studies), came to Lublin from penitentiary units in the districts of Lublin, Warsaw, Opole, Koszalin, Poznań and Olsztyn.

Not everyone who is serving a sentence of imprisonment is eligible to start training at the KUL Centre for Studies for Prisoners. Groups cannot be as numerous as in the regular course of education, and the candidate, apart from formal requirements such as a passed secondary school diploma, must not show risky behaviour. An important criterion is the attitude of the inmate.

The university for the first time undertook an innovative project in the field of re-socialisation through education “New socialisation” in the 2013/2014 academic year. The project attracted a lot of interest from national and foreign research centres, and a group of 36 inmates from all over Poland, incarcerated in the Remand Prison in Lublin, began their studies in social work at that time.

Adrian Andrzejewski