PRISON EDUCATION IN BRAZIL’S FEDERAL DISTRICT: A COMPARATIVE ANALYSIS OF THE 2021–2024 AND 2025–2028 PLANS

Abstract

The Federal District’s prison education plans guide the provision of educational opportunities for people deprived of liberty. This article compares the 2021–2024 and 2025–2028 plans to identify continuities, changes, and challenges concerning the right to education and holistic human development. The qualitative, descriptive-analytical documentary study applies content analysis across four categories: institutional management and organization; schooling and vocational education; non-formal education and reading development; and implementation and evaluation conditions. The corpus comprises two official plans totaling 156 pages and 29 numbered strategic objectives. The comparison identifies continuing commitments to literacy, Youth and Adult Education, integration with Vocational and Technological Education, and reading activities, alongside changes in monitoring procedures and expansion targets. The 2025–2028 plan reports an annual average of 29,000 reading-based sentence remission service instances during the preceding four-year period; this figure does not necessarily represent distinct participants. The findings show that planned expansion and monitoring mechanisms alone cannot establish whether educational activities are pedagogically integrated or implemented. The study concludes that the plans’ contribution to holistic human development depends on connecting schooling, non-formal educational practices, and institutional conditions for provision.