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This article demonstrates the way in which a person deprived of liberty goes through a process of construction of student identity in a scenario of tensions where educational proposals are implemented in contexts of punitive confinement. This tension emerges from the different logics of operation of each of the institutions involved, the school and the prison. The actions that intervene in this process, either promoting or interrupting it, are also described in the context of the article. On the one hand, it can be suggested that the context of punitive confinement reinforces the prisoner identity and depersonalizes the subjects, stripping them of their capacity for reasoning and freedom of expression to turn them into subjects incapable of choosing, feeling, and projecting. On the other hand, the state school guarantees these people's right to education offering them opportunities of emancipation and empowerment and repositioning them politically, culturally, and socially. In other words, state education in punitive confinement seeks to contribute to social justice through dignifying the lives of those deprived of liberty. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This proposal takes place as part of an agreement between the Culture and Education Ministry of La Pampa and the Penitentiary Unit No 4. This is an alternative to give the convicts of that institution the possibility of studying the Secondary School for Adult People. The student population, people with long sentences, do not show expectations related to work world, academic reasons or intention of developing personal knowledge for citizenship as it is prescribed by the three functions of the Federal Law of Education. Some analogies between penitentiary and education institutions moved us to consider that the expert knowledge had to be adapted to this particular context. In this way, it is not expected the exact adaptation of prescriptive formula made outside that context or surrender to the proposals and explanations transmitted by the pressure of dominant interests. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]