Juvenile delinquents' learning experiences in school within prison: narratives from the Malaysian context

Abstract

Juvenile delinquents are those within the age of 10 to 18 years old who committed crimes or engaged in acts against the law. Those who are caught would be punished according to the law and serve their time either in correctional institution or prison depending on the severity of crime committed. Since they are considered as minor and supposed to be at school, while serving their time, they would have to attend school within the prison. Within the Malaysian context, these schools are referred to as Integrity Schools. This study aims to explore the learning experiences of juvenile delinquents in one of these schools. This qualitative study employed a narrative approach involving two students aged 18. Data was collected using semi-structured interviews, which were divided into two parts. Part A focused on the background information of the respondents while Part B consisted of questions meant to answer five research questions. Salient themes were derived from an inductive content analysis guided by the five research questions related to the juvenile delinquents’ learning experiences while participating in educational program at the integrity school. The findings showed that both of the respondents expressed various learning experiences and there were a few similar experiences identified among both of them. Finally, the study suggested future researchers to include post-release experiences of juvenile delinquents in order to examine whether the benefits they hoped for upon release were genuinely attained.