To freedom as a lawyer
Every morning 22-year-old Alexander K. begins by sitting down at his computer and continuing his study of the topic "Murder and grievous bodily harm". A migrant from Kazakhstan wants to get a higher education and become a lawyer. There would be nothing surprising in such a laudable ambition, if the student's computer were not in a specially equipped prison room, and the student Sasha were not "doing time" for inflicting the very grievous bodily harm that he is now diligently studying.
Hagen Distance University is the only one in Germany where prisoners receive free education: out of its 56,000 students, about 400 have previously run afoul of society.
Alexander, with whom "Russkaya Germaniya" managed to establish an email correspondence, is just one of them: in his short life the young man had managed to take part in drug smuggling, trade in counterfeit cigarettes, and only after settling for a long time in a Berlin prison for having "disfigured an opponent in a fight" did he begin to actively reform himself. In other words, thanks to his knowledge of computers, he enrolled in a distance university, choosing law as his specialization. And—"made a firm promise to go free as a lawyer."
Sasha "is full of the most kind feelings for North Rhine-Westphalia, which gave him a unique chance in life" and enthusiastically tells of how he became a student: "The idea was suggested to me by a native of North Rhine-Westphalia, my fellow inmate, who as a social officer represents the interests of inmate students before the prison administration. He also arranged for me and four other guys - two Germans, a Pole, and a Ukrainian - to be allowed to use computers. The rest was a matter of technique: to be honest, I had mastered office programs since the time I drew up schedules for the passage of contraband cigarettes across the Polish border. I wrote to the university, got the curriculum, and started working. It should be noted that by the time I am released, it will be just time to receive the diploma, so the years spent aimlessly will not be a pity."
Is Sasha satisfied with the quality of the education he receives? "You bet! Especially since for such a special category as people deprived of liberty, it is free. While others pay from 1,600 to 1,800 euros for the course, I don't pay a cent. And even if rumors come true that studies for prisoners will become paid - 90 euros per semester - that's within my means."
A veritable idyll, isn't it? Why, you could just throw a slogan into the masses: "Want to get free distance education in North Rhine-Westphalia? Go to prison!" In reality, things are not so smooth. Not everyone in society is well-disposed toward prisoners—future degreed specialists—and these "specialists" sometimes create problems for themselves.
"Porn" instead of a test
"Ask your questions faster, because all this electronic freebie is already ending!" my acquaintance warned in his very first letter. And he explained: "About six months ago, prisoners from all over the country started signing up so actively for the North Rhine-Westphalian university that the prison authorities were simply amazed and rubbed their hands: 'Look, the number of those who decided to realize themselves in free life is growing!' And then it turned out that the majority simply wanted to get free access to the Internet to download pornography and other 'delights'. Why go far - here is my neighbor in prison, a guy from Dortmund, was caught for not working in a virtual laboratory, but... carrying on a conversation in a sex chat, while also pretending to be a young girl!"
Of course, the cunning prisoners were soon exposed, the Internet was turned off in most German prisons, and in the Berlin jail where our acquaintance Sasha resides, a complete restructuring of the prison network is underway. After it, students will be able to wander only through the virtual stacks of the Hagen Library (fortunately, some real libraries might envy its book storage) and send their tests to the Rhenish professors under the watchful eye of the wardens.
Sasha is not afraid of the "death" of prison Internet, and in any case he is not going to lose contact with North Rhine-Westphalia: "I can receive assignments and send my works by mail. Although correspondence from the university takes a long time, probably its contents are checked." But for many prisoners who have decided to gnaw not on prison bars but on the granite of science, the games of their fellow inmates, lovers of "strawberries", are like death.
"Here's an example!" Alexander exclaims indignantly. "One of my local acquaintances, serving time for murder, decided to become - no, don't be scared! - not a lawyer, but a specialist in computer technology. Now imagine how he, having already successfully started his studies, will be able to continue it if we are deprived of access to computers. Take the same Ukrainian Pavlo, who decided to become a web page designer, but now without the Internet he will probably have to part with his dream."
Dark past and bright future
And, between you and me, does Alexander himself not think that all this prisoner craving for knowledge is just an attempt to "dodge" labor re-education? As was customary in Soviet prisons during the stagnant years: if you don't want to go out to work, go to the Lenin room and listen to a political officer's dramatic reading of V. I. Ulyanov's thrillers. The future lawyer angrily rejects such a thought: "Study does not free us from fulfilling the duties of the internal order. Although you are right: even many responsible people treat our obtaining higher education as some kind of whim, while in fact it is hard work! By the way, as a future jurist, I will quote for those of your readers who think that we should be treated harshly: 'The goal of the German penitentiary system is the resocialization and rehabilitation of those who have strayed.'"
However, the future lawyer, a student who, by his own account, studies "only with good and excellent marks", does not like to "focus on the negative" and is full of the most rosy plans: "Having received a higher education, I will certainly go to Hagen and present bouquets of flowers to all my teachers. And then, maybe, I'll settle there. You say that with a prison past in the SRV they won't let me become a lawyer? Well, perhaps I'll head back to Kazakhstan then - doesn't our president need knowledgeable advisors in the field of the international legal system?"
Yulia ANDREEVA,
"Русская Германия".