A person leaving a correctional facility does not need anything extraordinary to keep them out: opportunities are the key to success. Often it is a question of employment and housing: with a job and a place to sleep, in principle a person can have a normal life if that is what he or she is looking for. It is also very important to have good leisure management and a supportive and trusting environment.
In the context of these services, the intervention of professionals brings together different fields of social education and sociocultural animation. It concerns the particular support that people may need to overcome their personal problems or needs and to maintain their efforts to integrate back into the community. The educational action focuses on the behaviors, attitudes, abilities, potential and interests of the inmates to promote change in the subject himself, in his relationship with others and in his relationship with the environment.
In society we need more empathy towards the people who are in a penitentiary center. We believe that this is something that is unlikely to happen to us. What we do not know is that the fewer opportunities we give, the more difficult it is for the other person not to make the same mistake: we prefer fear and mistrust to giving them opportunities.
Sergi Fortià. Criminologist and partner of Suara Cooperativa
