Educational practices within prisons can have an alienating role, in the sense of inscribing themselves in a resocializing purpose, or a liberating potential, insofar as they favor reflection on the living conditions of the subjects and expand the possibility to transform them. This article takes as reference some of these practices developed in the Villahermosa prison, in the city of Cali, Colombia, considering in particular the texts that underpin the project called Mission Character, and analyzes them taking as reference the institutional analysis and discourse analysis. This analysis is part of a general criticism of the penitentiary systems and their functionality and shows how these discourses, of a moralistic nature, reinforce an institutional practice that seeks the moral conversion of the prisoner.