Book presentation: Experiential Philosophy and Prison
Should philosophy be used to help people serving time for homicide, rape, or robbery with violence? How can the exercise of reflection help to strengthen the resolve of security professionals, managerial staff, and educational teams working in prisons. How can the families of inmates benefit from critical thinking? How is it possible to train the reflective and emotional skills of people at risk of social exclusion who have not yet ended up behind bars?
Over the past decade, the BOECIO project has created and assessed guidelines for thinking for over 500 people deprived of liberty in both Spain and abroad. More than 1,000 hours of thinking have brought philosophy to penitentiaries and have placed the latter on the map of the former.
This book is a practical guide for whoever wants to train prisoners or people living on the margins of society. Similarly, those voluntary or aid workers interested in offering these collectives a deeper and more critical life, free from ideological restraints, will find in Experiential Philosophy and Prison a useful and rigorous tool and a program that can be applied in both the workplace and their private lives.
José Barrientos-Rastrojo (barrientos@us.es) is Associate Professor at the University of Seville (Spain) and Director of BOECIO (http://institucional.us.es/BOECIO), a research project funded by the European Union that train on philosophical skills to people at social risks. In addition, he is the editor of the International Journal on Philosophical Practice HASER (https://revistascientificas.us.es/index.php/HASER) and he has written more than 30 books in several languages. Experience Philosophical Practice (2021) and Experiential Philosophy and Prisons (2023) are two of last ones. He has been working as philosophical counseling and with several groups of people at social risks (inmates, children and elders from poor countries and neighborhoods) and he has researched at several universities such as Harvard, Cambridge, Princeton, Tokio, UNAM (Mexico) and University of Sao Paulo, among others.