Exploring “moral performance” in Chilean prisons and its potential in reinsertion Explorando el “desempeño moral” en cárceles chilenas y su potencial en la reinserción

Abstract

Establishing a mechanism of observation of the prison environment is crucial to know what life is like inside, and also to promote processes of social reintegration. This study used a version adapted to Chile from the Measuring Quality of Prison Life [mqpl] questionnaire (Liebling, 2004), surveying 1 448 inmates in five Chilean prisons. The results of our study suggest that i) the Chilean version of the mqpl would be sensitive to the Chilean prison realities ii) the prisons studied would vary in their moral performance, both globally and in specific indicators, providing preliminary empirical evidence of what life is like in each prison and where the main problems would be in each of them.