The Royal Society for the encouragement of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce (RSA) has called for the government to adopt a different approach to prisons and reduce reoffending.
The Learning Prison, the outcome of the RSA's Prison Learning Network, acknowledges that advances in prison learning and skills have been made in recent years but argues that further significant improvements require a "common sense" approach based on evidence and reason, not opinion.
Prisons could do much more to increase public safety through rehabilitation, says the RSA's report, 'if we could put aside a dysfunctional policy debate that puts government on the defensive and leaves practitioners and prisoners without a voice'.
It concludes that politicians need to be braver about treating prisons as a core public service requiring modernisation consistent with other areas. This includes: giving practitioners and prisoners a stronger voice and enabling them to drive innovation; raising aspiration for prisoner outcomes and increasing the use of IT.
Recommendations include:
• transformation of the technological infrastructure of prisons that takes them from being behind the curve, to ahead of it.
This should build prisons' capacity for learning through technology including:
• standard security protocols
• giving prisoners access to up-to-date and industry-standard equipment
• an e-learning framework for the whole estate
• allowing the private sector to test new technologies in prisons
The report includes case studies showing the multiple benefits that technology can bring and contends that without transformation the digital exclusion of prisoners and speed of technological change will leave more ex-prisoners unemployable.
Malcolm Grant, president and provost, UCL, who chairs the Prison Learning Network said: "Impressive efforts are going into prison education in often adverse conditions. Spending on prison education and training has risen in recent years to over £150m in 2007/8. This is very welcome but is dwarfed by the staggering £11bn that re-offending by ex-prisoners is estimated to cost us each year. At an important political moment, The Learning Prison argues for considerable political courage, leadership and inspiration."
From Bubb's Blog
From Flip Chart Fairy Tales
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