Tag Archives: offenders

Teaching offenders to code: supporting digital skills and reducing reoffending among those leaving prison

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Breaking the cycle of reoffending by teaching prisoners to code

In the UK, we have one of the highest numbers of adults in prison in western Europe, and of those who have been in prison, almost half will re-offend within a year of release. Reoffending in the UK is estimated to cost as much as £15bn each year. One of the major factors in reducing reoffending is finding and sustaining employment upon leaving prison, however, it has been suggested that the skills and training that offenders receive while in prison only prepares them in a limited way for life “on the outside”.

The importance of digital literacy and the disadvantage caused by a digital skills deficit

Whether it is applying for benefit payments, booking a doctor’s appointment, online shopping, paying council tax or word processing and data navigation in a wide range of today’s job roles, having a basic understanding of digital literacy is important. For many people these skills are acquired over time, sometimes even by accident as we come into contact with more and more digital services in our day to day lives, including in many of today’s jobs where word processing and email skills seem to be a given.

However, for people leaving prison, perhaps who have been away from the fast pace of digital development for a few years, the leaps and bounds in terms of technological change and how we use digital platforms for a range of tasks can be a daunting prospect. While there is some exposure to digital platforms inside prisons, there are increasing calls to ensure that in order to better reintegrate into society on release from prison, digital skills should be higher up the agenda for those prisoners being prepared for release.

Linking digital skill programmes to labour market need

While we raise concerns about digital literacy, it is also widely reported that the UK is facing a digital skills deficit, with job roles going unfilled because there are not enough skilled individuals to fill them. Why not then, supporters argue, align the two policies to meet a need within the skills market and better support offenders to be able to live a full, digitally literate life on their release from prison.

In his Ted talk on teaching coding in prisons, Michael Taylor highlights some of, what he sees as, the key issues with the current skills and training programme in prisons: it is mundane and repetitive, and it is not linked to skills or labour market need. Coding, he argues, in addition to being accessible, cheap to teach and not requiring any pre-requisite qualifications, is an easy way that prisoners can be equipped with high-level digital skills to help them find employment, and teach skills that employers want and need to employ.

He also argues that coding is a way to equip offenders with the basic tools to go into a range of careers or further training across a range of occupations, in a range of sectors doing a wide range of different jobs – giving the variety and scope for development that many offenders simply don’t get from current skills and training programmes. The benefits, he argues, go beyond just teaching the ins and outs of how to code, with digital skills having wider applicability around managing information, communicating, transacting, problem solving and creating as well as raising confidence and self esteem.

Learning from digital skill programmes in prisons elsewhere

The Last Mile programme in California is being used as a model to create a UK based coding programme for prisoners. The programme teaches digital skills, specifically coding, to allow offenders to find employment once they leave prison. The American programme is based out of San Quentin prison and has consistently shown positive outcomes for participants, with a recidivism rate for participants dropping from over 70% to 0 in the latest cohort of “graduates”. These positive and tangible outcomes are one of the reasons supporters have been so keen to roll out a similar scheme in the UK.

The UK Government has acknowledged this evidence and in March 2019 the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport announced it is investing in two pilot schemes, one at HMP Humber and one at HMP Holme House which will see a selection of “carefully vetted prisoners” participate in new digital skills programmes. Prisoners will learn CSS, HTML and JavaScript before moving on to more advanced coding techniques. They will then be invited to work for partner companies, eventually on day release, with a view to better preparing them for work when they are released from prison, while also helping employers manage perceived risks that come with hiring former offenders.

Final thoughts

Offenders leaving prison face a number of barriers to successful reintegration into the community, and preparing them fully to meet all of these challenges can be a difficult task in itself. However, by better equipping offenders with digital skills we will enable them to leave prison with knowledge employers are looking for. Coding programmes could be one route to developing skills for prisoners due for release which can help them adapt to life outside prison, give them purpose and options and, it is hoped, reduce the likelihood of reoffending in the future.

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Released with nowhere to go: housing solutions for prisoners

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It has been widely argued that securing adequate housing for ex-offenders reduces rates of recidivism. However, it is not uncommon for a person to be released from prison with nowhere to live and there have been criticisms over the statutory support available for prison leavers, and the lack of housing options available on release.

Being homeless on release from prison can lead to a downward spiral, re-offending and more prison time, incurring substantial social and economic costs for all concerned. The annual cost of re-offending to the economy in the UK has been estimated at between £9.5 and £13 billion.

Housing linked to re-offending

Various studies have highlighted the link between housing and recidivism and the importance of housing support for rehabilitation.

A study by the Joseph Rowntree Foundation (JRF) back in 1996 highlighted that ex-prisoners are more likely to re-offend if they do not find satisfactory accommodation on release – two-thirds of ex-prisoners with no satisfactory accommodation re-offended within 12 months of release, while just a quarter of those with good accommodation did so.

The Social Exclusion Unit highlighted in a 2002 study that housing was one of the factors that had a “huge impact” on re-offending and that having stable accommodation reduces the risk of re-offending by a fifth.

A report published in 2012, found that three-fifths (60%) of prisoners believed that having a place to live was important in stopping them from re-offending in the future. It also found that 15% of people in prison were homeless prior to custody. More than three-quarters of prisoners (79%) who reported being homeless before custody were re-convicted in the first year after release, compared with less than half (47%) of those who did not report being homeless before custody.

The Howard League of Penal Reform has highlighted that a third of people leaving prison say they have nowhere to go. If those on remand are included, it is estimated that this could represent up to 50,000 people annually.

Further, the rough sleeping in London report (CHAIN) found that 32% of people seen rough sleeping in 2015/16 had experience of prison, indicating that a significant number hidden homeless are ex-offenders.

Such statistics suggest a clear link between housing and re-offending. It has even been suggested that ex-prisoners have intentionally re-offended to avoid homelessness.

 ‘Inadequate’ housing support

The JRF report found that the general level of housing support received by prisoners was ‘inadequate’.

Worryingly, 15 years after this report, Barnardo’s highlighted the need for improved support for young ex-offenders as it found children as young as 13 were being released from custody without a safe place to live. Barnardo’s argued that supported accommodation on release from custody could produce savings of more than £67,000 per individual over a three-year period.

A review of probation services carried out in 2014 also criticised the system, finding that:

“contact between offenders and offender supervisors or managers varied considerably and even where there was good contact, this had little impact on accommodation and ETE [employment, training and education] outcomes at the point of release, although contacts were more effective post-release. Sentence planning and oversight were weak and resettlement work in prisons was insufficiently informed.”

The Public Accounts Committee has more recently noted that “the offender housing problem is deteriorating”, despite probation reforms. And Crisis has also raised concern about the lack of financial or practical support to find accommodation for those leaving prison.

Current action and the Homelessness Reduction Act

Most prisons have a housing and resettlement service called ‘through the gate’, introduced by the government in 2015. However, early reports on these services have not been hopeful, described as “having a negligible impact on reducing prisoner re-offending rates, two years after its introduction.”

Local authorities also have a statutory duty to assist homeless and vulnerable ex-offenders in some circumstances, and if not entitled to social housing, they must provide advice to ex-offenders at risk of homelessness. This duty has been strengthened by the Homelessness Reduction Act 2017 in England, which has just come into force. The Act puts an obligation on prison or probation services to notify a local authority if they believe a person to be at risk of homelessness.

Crisis has described the Act as “the most significant change to the homelessness legislation in 40 years”.

In Scotland, the Scottish Prison Service and partners launched the Sustainable Housing on Release for Everyone (SHORE) standards in December 2017. These standards represent a good example of preventative measures, which aim ‘to ensure that the housing needs of individuals in prison are handled at an early stage, in a consistent way across Scotland, regardless of where they come from, their housing status and how long they have been in prison or young offenders’ institution’.

Will it make a difference?

It is too early to tell whether these actions will have the desired impact but here’s hoping they will be more effective than previous reforms. It has been suggested that such provisions will go some way to help create the culture change needed but that it is not enough.

The evidence points to the need for greater collaboration and partnership working across all sectors.

With the shortage in housing, austerity, and increasing numbers of homeless people among the whole population, it will certainly be no mean feat.

The Knowledge Exchange provides information services to local authorities, public agencies, research consultancies and commercial organisations across the UK. Follow us on Twitter to see what developments in policy and practice are interesting our research team. 

Reducing re-offending: rehabilitation and integration through employment

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By Rebecca Jackson

Prisons in Britain have a poor record for reducing re-offending – 46% of adults are re-convicted within one year of release. And it’s estimated that each year, the financial cost to society of re-offending in Britain is £11bn.

In 2014, 68% of prisoners thought that ‘having a job’ was important in stopping re-offending.

However almost 50% of prisoners in the UK said that they had no qualifications, 40% needed help with education while in prison, and of these, 21% needed help with basic literacy and numeracy.

Government and academic research has supported the idea of employment post-sentence as being a key way to reduce re-offending and help integrate ex-offenders back into society. But opportunities within prison are often limited and once released, former offenders often find employers reluctant to hire them because their criminal record.

Roof Womens Prison Lincoln Castle, Creative Commons, rodtuk, July 2015.

Roof Womens Prison Lincoln Castle, rodtuk via Creative Commons, July 2015.

Building skills within prison

While in prison, inmates are given the opportunity to learn skills, trades and improve their basic literacy and numeracy ability. Some are allowed to do kitchen work within their prison; others work in offices alongside prison staff carrying out menial tasks in order to help strengthen their CV on their return to ‘normal life’.

However for many, there is little or no support, and the skills they learn are not sufficient to get them a job ‘on the outside’.

The prison service has introduced a number of schemes to attempt to improve this preparedness for work in the real world, but as the re-offending statistics show, success has been somewhat limited, with many struggling to stay in work or find work altogether.

Barriers to employment

While in some instances it is a lack of willingness or a lack of preparedness on the part of the former offender, another huge barrier to ex offender employment is the stigma associated with a criminal record and the reluctance of employers to consider people for roles who have served time in prison.

Efforts have been made by both government and independent employment and criminal justice organisations to reduce concern from employers.

Some firms have made a conscious effort, to deliver a series of very public and very successful ex offender training programmes, including companies such as National Grid, Timpsons, First Direct, Co-Op,Marks and Spencer, Virgin, Greggs and DHL.

And the Ban the box campaign, whcih aims to remove the tick box from application forms that asks about criminal convictions, hopes to reduce the impact of stigma even further by allowing ex offending applicants to reach the latter stages of an interview process, after it was found that many employers would automatically exclude someone who had checked this box on an application form.

Innovative offender employment projects

Creative Commons, Robert Fairchild, Cupcakes n sprinkles, 2011

Robert Fairchild via Creative Commons, 2011

The Freedom Bakery, based in Glasgow, is a social enterprise that employs ex-offenders, in the hope that employment will break the cycle of re-offending. The founder of the bakery said the aim of the scheme was to help encourage personal development as well as skills and integrate former offenders back into society. However he stressed that it is not about ‘pity employment‘ – people are given the chance to reform and develop, and the company hopes to make money.

Similarly Bad Boy’s Bakery, the brain child of TV chef Gordon Ramsay is now a well-established CIC (Community Interest Company) run by Working Links. Based at HMP Brixton in London, they sell goods to local Caffe Nero stores, as well as local sellers and within the prison canteen. Recruits are trained to industry standards in food quality and safety, including NVQ Levels 1 and 2 in Food Production, giving them skills in food preparation, baking, stock and time management, as well as knowledge of health and safety.

But it’s not just independent businesses who are engaging with ex- offenders. Well known high street chain Timpson’s also has one of the most successful and well established ex-offender employment schemes in the country. 16 of their shops in the UK are now managed by individuals who have spent time in prison and have come through their rehabilitation scheme.

The National Grid also offers offender training and employment programmes with people coming to the end of their sentences and provides training and a job on release for those selected. Over 2,000 prisoners have completed the scheme which has a re-offending rate of just 6%.

Our infographic breaks down some of the key facts.

Prisoners inforgraphic

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Social labs … tackling social problems through collaboration and design

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Crossing out problems and writing solutions on a blackboard.

by Laura Dobie

Nesta’s LabWorks 2015 global lab gathering kicks off today in London, bringing together innovation labs, units, offices and teams working within and with government to address social challenges.

Today on the blog we look at social labs, their potential to improve public services and a couple of social labs who are carrying out innovative work in public services.

What are social labs?

Social labs are platforms for tackling complex social challenges.

Zaid Hassan highlights the following key characteristics of social labs:

  • They are social, facilitating participation by a broad range of stakeholders
  • They are experimental, taking an iterative approach to problem-solving
  • They are systemic, seeking to address the root cause of a problem, and not just its symptoms (Hassan, 2014, p.3)

Social labs draw inspiration from design thinking, which is centred on the following principles of design which were promoted by design firm IDEO:

  • A user-centred approach to problem solving
  • Using direct observation as a main source of learning
  • Moving quickly to creating prototypes as a means of generating additional knowledge
  • Learning from failures to refine and redevelop

Social labs in the public sector

The public sector is making increasing use of design, policy or social labs as a means of complementing and reinforcing skills in public policy, programme and service design. They contribute a different perspective to challenges and use a range of research methods and facilitation techniques to foster ideas and insights that attempt to incorporate many different points of view.

Recent Canadian research on a What Works Lab, which was established to develop approaches to increase employer engagement in workplace training, found that using lab methodology enhances the ability to generate insights into potential policy responses, and that lab techniques can also substantially reduce the transmission cycle between research, policy and service delivery. The research also highlighted how experimentation in a lab setting can be used to de-risk an initiative before wider implementation, and demonstrated that labs are an effective means of generating high-quality policy work.

Social Innovation Lab Kent (SILK)

SILK is a small team based within Kent County Council established in 2007 to ‘do policy differently’. They consider that the best solutions come from people who are at the heart of an issue, those with lived experience, families, friends, volunteers, and front line workers, and they ensure that these groups are involved at all stages their projects.

Projects are broken down into the following phases:

  • Initiate. Involve the right people, create a project plan collectively and decide who needs to be informed about the project.
  • Create. Collect as many insights as possible, involve a broad range of stakeholders and generate ideas for testing in the next phase.
  • Test. Test the ideas which were proposed during the create phase, and continue testing until a model that woks is identified. Trial runs, prototypes or ‘mock ups’ can be a part of this process.
  • Define. A model which has been tested and known to work is defined and consolidated.

SILK has delivered a variety of projects across the themes of future services, service (re)design and sustainable services, and tackled a range of social issues, including accessible and affordable food, the resettlement of offenders and creating a dementia-friendly community.

MindLab

Based in Danish central government, MindLab employs a human-centred design approach to address public sector challenges. Its board sets its strategic direction and approves its portfolio of projects, ensuring that their work is aligned with their sponsors’ priorities. Its emphasis on human-centred design helps to forge links between the perspectives of end users and government decision making.

MindLab’s team has a variety of skills which are indicative of its ethos and method, including social research, design, public administration, project management, organisational development and creative facilitation.

In one project MindLab worked with National Board of Industrial Injuries (ASK) to increase the number of people who remain in employment after suffering an injury at work. MindLab highlighted the potential in strategic working across working across public, private and non-governmental organisations and a change in attitude in helping these people return to the labour market.

MindLab interviewed people who had suffered industrial injuries and put together service journeys, which mapped the different stakeholders involved in a work injury case from a citizen’s perspective. They demonstrated through a case study how cooperation between the municipality, the insurance company and ASK improved an injured person’s employment prospects. MindLab also conducted internal workshops with ASK management to support a change in strategic focus from case resolution to employment outcomes for injured people.

It is clear that social labs are taking a different approach to policy and service delivery, focusing on the experiences and needs of service users to devise innovative solutions to a range of social challenges.

The Idox Information Service can give you access to a wealth of information on economic and social policy and public service delivery. To find out more on how to become a member, contact us.

Further reading

Hassan, Zaid (2014). The social revolution: a new approach to solving out most complex challenges. San Francisco: Berrett-Koehler Publishers, Inc. (Available for loan from the Idox Information Service Library)

The What Works Lab process: report for the Skills and Employment Branch, Employment and Social Development Canada