<![CDATA[Higher education in women’s prisons can strengthen capabilities and reintegration, but Latin American programmes rarely connect pedagogy, organisational learning, and post-release monitoring. This mixed-methods, descriptive–interpretive case study examined the University of Panama’s Annex at the Cecilia Orillac de Chiari Women’s Rehabilitation Centre (CEFERE). Fieldwork occurred from January to April 2024 with 24 incarcerated university students recruited through non-probability opportunity sampling under institutional-access and classroom-availability conditions and 37 university stakeholders (35 lecturers and 2 authorities), using questionnaires, anonymised interviews, institutional records, and documentary sources. Quantitatively, 18 of 33 valid respondents (54.5%) did not know whether graduate tracking existed, 10 (30.3%) answered yes, and 5 (15.2%) answered no; 4 of the 37 invited respondents did not answer the item. For institutional-information access, 18 of 35 valid respondents (51.4%) answered yes, 12 (34.3%) no, and 5 (14.3%) did not know; 2 of 37 did not answer. Student interviews indicated that university study structured daily life, strengthened academic agency, and sustained future orientation, while family separation and institutional restrictions remained salient. The study advances prior prison-education and knowledge-management research by operationalising a five-stage, gender-responsive model that converts situated experience into validated practices, an institutional repository, and a longitudinal reintegration indicator. The findings support permanent graduate tracking, protected data governance, and cross-sector employment partnerships.]]>
