This thesis investigates how punitive versus restorative justice models shape prison‐based education, learner identity, and post‐release reintegration. Through a comparative case study of Ireland, England, Norway, and New Zealand, it investigates the tension between institutional control and transformative potential in prison education. The study is grounded in an interdisciplinary theoretical framework, drawing on Michel Foucault’s concepts of disciplinary power and biopolitics, Paulo Freire’s critical pedagogy, bell hooks’ engaged teaching, Antonio Gramsci’s theory of the organic intellectual, and Jack Mezirow’s transformative learning theory. It introduces three original conceptual tools, the activated gaze, reputational overruling, and sensationalised stigma, to illuminate how surveillance and stigma extend beyond release, constraining access to education, housing, and employment. Employing a thematic comparative methodology with constructivist ontology and subjectivist epistemology, the research integrates documentary analysis and existing scholarship. The findings reveal that while punitive systems instrumentalise education for risk management and behavioral compliance, restorative models position education as a human right, fostering agency, critical consciousness, and identity redefinition. The thesis concludes with a set of policy recommendations advocating for the institutionalisation of higher education as a central, transformative force in rehabilitation. It calls for a reimagining of carceral education not as a conditional offering, but as a liberatory, sustained practice that challenges stigma and supports genuine human restoration.