The import model in Norway and Flanders and The European Recommendation on Prison Education
The concept of the import model has become central to modern prison education policy in several European countries. It represents a shift from isolated, self-contained prison systems toward a model in which external, community-based institutions provide education and other essential services inside prisons. This approach aims to ensure continuity, equality, and reintegration — allowing people in detention to work with the same institutions that support citizens in the wider society.
In this project, the partners wanted to compare education in prison between two countries that both practice the import model. There are some basic similarities in how prison education is structured in Norway and Belgium/Flanders. It is organized through the education authorities, teachers from the regular school enter the prisons, the teaching basically follows regular curricula, and the documentation the students receive is issued by the school system and without links to the prison system. At the same time, we found differences, both in the organization and financing of school provision, and also in how and what other services are imported (health, welfare, work, arts, clergy).
It is the educational services that the partners have been concerned with throughout. In this review, the partners present the import model for prison education in Norway and Flanders it was studied during three meetings over the course of a year and a half. Partners started with two meetings for leaders and teachers, first in Trondheim and then in Antwerp, and concluded with a meeting for leaders and administrators in Strasbourg.
In Strasbourg, there was a meeting with a representative of the Council of Europe. During the implementating of this Erasmus+ project, the Council of Europe has been revising its Recommendation on Prison Education. The partners have followed this work and conclude with some reflections on this recommendation, which can be consider as a common European standard.
