Prison Farming Activities
Each country was asked to provide a survey about agricultural activities connected to prisons to gain basic knowledge as a starting point for our project activities to elaborate training about ecological issues in the context of prison farms. For the elaboration of the draft of the report for WP2, existing initiatives connected to social farming in prisons in Germany have been searched via Internet search. A table compiling the different existing approaches has been provided in the draft. A rough overview of different types of prisons has been provided as well.
Previous research activities carried out at the Faculty of Organic Agricultural Sciences at the University of Kassel in Witzenhausen, mainly three master theses, have been a valuable source of information. The occupations of prison staff and the characteristics of prisoners were investigated. Also, basic information elaborated on the concept of implementing an eco-social farm in Torgau/ Saxonia by Petrarca could be used.
There are only a few scientific publications on social farming in prisons in Germany. An additional internet search was conducted for this purpose as well. It revealed that there were hardly any peer-reviewed publications on this topic.
For the study of the sustainability of the different initiatives and the role of landscape care, landscape development, biotopes and biodiversity, information provided by the theses has been considered again. I.e in Bavaria it was decided in 2015 that the agricultural areas of Bavarian prisons must be converted to organic farming methods. Similar developments have been observed in Baden-Württemberg. In JVA Laufen Lebenau, various training courses are held on topics like “agriculture” and “nature and landscape conservation”. After they participated in these courses, the young people in the prison received a certificate for their future life.
