The Role of Vocational Training in the Resocialization Process in Open Correctional Facilities: A Qualitative Study Based on the Bochum‐Langendreer Case in Germany

ABSTRACT

Prison credentials can signal rehabilitation yet also disclose the records they aim to conceal. This study examines how a German open prison embedding vocational training in mainstream qualifications addresses this dilemma. Interviews with 14 inmates and two staff at Bochum-Langendreer Open Correctional Facility underwent codebook thematic analysis. Inmates valued training for economic independence, especially chamber certificates concealing their origin. The facility managed the prison label through discreet concealment within the credential and brokered disclosure, vouching for inmates in the community. Their effectiveness depended on qualification level, migrant inmates’ residence status, and economic conditions at release. Seeing prison as a “school of life” or “school of crime” reflected differing notions of school shaped by prior incarceration. The findings extend credential-dilemma research beyond Anglo-American contexts, offer the first German evidence on ethnicity and desistance orientations, and show credential design cannot substitute for the legal and social recognition desistance requires.