Prisoners enroll in open education systems to get diplomas, degrees, doctorates

ISTANBUL

Some 44,000 prisoners and detainees were enrolled at secondary and high schools to receive diplomas, 110 for graduate programs and 47 of them for getting doctorates as part of an education project for prisoners conducted by the Justice Ministry this year, according to daily Milliyet.

A total of 55,072 prisoners sat for exams to continue their education term amid the outbreak, while 30,000 of them gave entrance exams for secondary and high schools.

Some 4,000 inmates attended the literacy courses opened in the prisons for which 1.1 million books from the prison libraries and 204,000 books from the district libraries were borrowed by the inmates, according to data obtained by the ministry.

Around 10,000 prisoners qualified to enter the open education system in universities, 688 of them enrolled in undergraduate programs, 110 “prisoner-students” got into graduate programs, whereas 47 of them got in to obtain doctorate degrees, according to the statistics.

As part of the program, annually, 60,000 prisoners take vocational education for more than 180 branches of business. Some 82,018 prisoners graduated from these vocational courses this year, according to the data.

Sports activities are another part of the program. With the help of the Youth and Sports Ministry, around 198,000 prisoners attended the official sports activities in the prisons.

Within the religious education, 114 prisoners got training courses to become hafiz and 13 took official hafiz documents. For someone to become a hafiz (the protector), he will have to memorize the complete text of the Quran as by doing so he becomes its guardian.

In the open and semi-open prisons, inmates can go out and sit for exams in their schools. In a closed prison, a special permit from the prison board is needed to leave and sit for exams physically. Rules for entrance exams differ from university to university as some deliver the exams to the prison board whereas some want the “prisoner-student” to be physically in the school at the time of the exams. While attending the exams at schools, gendarmeries accompany the prisoner.