Religious Education in
Prisons
Key Questions:
• What are the aims of RE in Prisons?
• Analyzing of the program of these institutions.
• What are the problems of this Education.
Religious Education’s Aims for Prisons (Ozdemir, 2012) :
• To make them understand their faults and to feel sorry for them.
• To reintegration of them to the society.
• In addition to sentencing, make them be aware of their responsibilities.
• Main goal is education and accommodation.
• To make them know that every person needs to religion
• To make them learn how to read Koran and how to apply religious practices if they want.
• To make them be aware of that Islam is the last religion
• To make them learn and practice Islamic faith, worship,
and moral values.
• Even though it had started to discuss religious education in prisons in 1959,
According to agreement between Department of Religious Affairs and Ministry of Justice, the official employment
started in 1974 (Ozdemir, 1998).
• In 1983, it had been conducted an educational program
including Religion and Moral courses. After having special employees for this course, the curriculum of the course
had been developed (Ozdemir, 2012).
• There are 74 units in this program. Some of them are follow (Ozdemir, 2012):
• Faith and worship, our family, home and environment,
Ataturk’s ideas about our religion and secularism, hygiene and truthfulness, love of, nation and homeland,
citizenship, responsibilities, some information about other
religions, our tradition, holy days and so on..
Problems in RE in the prisons (Ozdemir, 2012)
• There is no classroom for this course. It has been held in the ward (dormitory)
• There is no specific book for the preachers to follow for their course
• Preachers are not permanent in the prisons, generally, they are deployed
• Generally deployed preacher has lack of desire to teach in the prisons.
• Because of the selectiveness of the course, there are not so many people in the course.
Recommendations:
• There should be real cooperation between Department of Religious Affairs and Ministry of Justice.
• Preachers have to give importance to the prisoners
• Preachers should include more varies topics and make their course more interesting
• There should be a specific classroom for this course.
• Preachers have to have different model and methods for the course.
• Preachers have to get special proficiency for psychology (See Ozdemir, 2012)
