PRISON a cynic once said, is "an expensive way of making bad people worse." A few days visiting prisons makes you put it more humanely prison is an expensive way of damaging beyond repair many hurt people. Education is a way of helping these people to survive their time inside. Hopefully, it's also a way of helping them to survive when they go back out to the conditions which shaped them.

Prison education has been defined by a 1989 Council of Europe report as classroom subjects, vocational education, creative and cultural activities, physical education and sports, social education and library facilities. All are present in the Irish system, but not all are available in each prison.

Where it exists, vocational training is organised by the co-ordinator of work/training, as distinct from the co-ordinator of education, Kevin Warner. Instructors are specialist prison officers. Where they exist, all of the other aspects of education are generally taught by VEC teachers, with prison officers involved, for instance, in PE and in libraries.

Other bodies such as the Open University, staff from other colleges, such as the NCAD, and the Arts Council, through Writers and Artists in Residence, also contribute to prison education. By and large, however, it has been the VEC which has pioneered prison education since it began in Shanganagh Castle in Co Dublin in late Sixties, with the Department of Justice providing the space (not enough) and equipment (much more generously). There are now 14 education units. Castlerea in Co Roscommon as yet has none, and "a Dublin teacher" is covering Kildare while teaching posts are being advertised there.

The system is based firmly on adult education concepts but it is still to a large extent pioneering. Teachers have developed their own text books and materials, particularly for literacy, and adapted their methods. For instance, teaching sex offenders or the seriously ill presents particular challenges.

The teachers have evolved six to eight week modules, because of high turnover rates and because of the need to give a sense of achievement to people who have seldom experienced it. They have moved into an educational mode which seeks to form a bridge between prison and an achievable rung on the ladder of continuing education and/or a job outside.

Bridge building is particularly evident where there is a pre-release programme, especially in places like Shelton Abbey, the open prison in Arklow, Co Wicklow. "Their whole time here is really a pre-release programme," says supervising teacher Patsy Breen. "They know the gates are open, but they know the consequences if they go through them. For the first time in a very long time they must take responsibility for their actions. For some of them it may be the first time ever."

The formal curriculum encompasses subjects from basic education (literacy and numerary) to social and environmental studies, and practical subjects from computer applications to woodwork. It also includes a structured nine week development group therapy programme and a five week life skills programme. Aids/HIV awareness seminars and addiction awareness courses are offered, as well as a PE plan which emphasises "taking control of one's own body."

Almost all of this happens in pre-fab buildings at the rear of the beautiful Abbey. One room in the main building, the interior of which is bare of beauty other than the lovely ceilings and woodwork and which smells faintly of disinfectant, is also a classroom.

Between 40 and 45 of the maximum number of 57 prisoners, almost all long term prisoners finishing their sentences, attend school here, despite having to work (mostly maintenance and on the farm). Breen "actively recruits" newcomers, but "if they're not interested we have to respect that."

Three of the teachers facilitate the pre-release development course, using very, very specific exercises to build confidence initially" and working through what Kevin Warner describes as "looking at patterns in their lives where they have never seen patterns before" to finish with a life plan, with small, realisable steps to be carried out during the final week of the programme.

Through contacts with outside agencies, the school tries to set up dynamic and supportive "bridges" to help prisoners to re-enter the community.

THE CHAOS caused by early and temporary release and by transfers from other overcrowded prisons destroys well planned and hard working attempts at rehabilitation. "Whenever possible they let us know from the office here that someone may get out," says Breen, "but it has happened that we've started the pre-release course with a group of six and some of them are gone before the end. That's doing nobody any favours."

In the constant tension between the rehabilitive and the penal aspects of prison life, the latter generally takes precedence. Further tension is created by the number of people sent every day to prisons in which there is no room, but whom the prisons have no option but to accept at least for a while.

Space problems are central if prisons are ever to become places of rehabilitation for the 9,000 people jailed every year. This can happen only if places are provided not only in terms of accommodation, but in terms of rehabilitive facilities.

"The new womens prison has excellent education facilities," says Warner. "That's appropriate because the participation in education among the women in both Mountjoy and Limerick is very, very high. Unfortunately in the Curragh, which was recently opened, not enough provision. was made for education, or indeed other activities such as work/training, recreation and treatment. I also be concerned about the new remand prison for 400 prisoners at Clondalkin there seems to be a view that remand prisoners don't take part in education but for some .remand prisoners education can be very, very important. We must bear in mind that it's a critical time in their lives. Many of the suicides, for example, take place among remand prisoners."

Willie Kane, chief prison officer in St Patrick's Institution and formerly chief prison officer at Mountjoy, has seen whole generations of families wiped out not by suicides, though he has seen those, but by drugs related illnesses and accidental overdosing.

Unless education both "outside" and "inside" can make a difference for these people, they face continuous, short periods in prison. .. and a possible death sentence.