CAN WE LEARN FROM MISTAKES? RESEARCH ON AN INCLUSION PROTOCOL FOR PEOPLE UNDER PROBATION AND COMMUNITY SANCTIONS.

The pedagogical perspective recognizes the value of recidivism measurement as a relevant indicator, but highlights its limitations when used as the only parameter to evaluate the effectiveness of inclusive educational interventions. For this reason, alongside the measurement of formal outcomes (revocations, new convictions), pedagogical research needs tools that investigate transformation processes, the ways in which individuals rework their identity, build life projects, and develop agency in different life ecosystems. Quantitative data on recidivism, already available through prison administration statistics, provide aggregate information on behavioral outcomes, but do not allow us to understand the processes through which educational interventions produce transformations, nor do they help identify elements that make methodologies transferable. The main objective of the research is to contribute to reducing recidivism through the adoption of an educational protocol with an ecosystemic approach, applied in probation and community sanctions settings. The hypothesis is that an ecosystemic protocol applied in probation and community sanctions, which acts simultaneously on multiple levels of the individual's life system, can promote structural transformations in the person that are distinguishable from temporary strategic compliance, thus contributing to recidivism prevention through social and educational inclusion processes. These transformations are investigated through implicit knowledge (Bruner, 1996) – understood as cognitive repertoires, representations, and interpretative frameworks that guide action – which provides a privileged lens for evaluating changes in service users: unlike binary outcomes such as recidivism, implicit knowledge documents transformations in the ways individuals interpret themselves, their resources, their relationships with institutions, and their future. The research adopts a participatory two-phase design, with the first phase structured as research-training and the second as an exploratory qualitative study following an interactive approach (Maxwell, 2013). Phase 1, lasting six months, involves probation and community sanctions officers from Campania region in a research-training pathway. Phase 2 adopts an interactive approach (Maxwell, 2013) with service users under probation and community sanctions who are supported by trained officers. The inclusion criterion "previous detention experience" constitutes the initial anchor of the research, theoretically motivated by the need to investigate reintegration processes in individuals who have experienced the total institution of prison (Goffman, 1961) and its possible desocializing effects.