I attended the Digital Leaders Salon yesterday about the findings of Professor Cynthia McDougall\u2019s research into prisoner self-service. There was a good attendance from public, private and third sector organisations.<\/p>\n
Cynthia outlined her experience and career and gave some background to the York University research project emphasising that it is independent. She saw self-service as having the potential to overcome, prisons being in a \u201cparallel universe\u201d when compared to the ubiquity of IT in the outside world and how this works against prisoners\u2019 successful reintegration into the community.<\/p>\n
Key findings:<\/span><\/p>\n Grahame Hawkings, Governor of HMP\/YOI Isis, has never run the prison without self-service and would not like to run a prison without it. \u00a0Key observation – the shift in the degree to which prisoners can take control of, even quite mundane aspects of their life in prison led to a noticeable reduction in the amount of conflict. \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n A number of attendees congratulated Cynthia on the research talking about \u201c<\/span>clear conclusions<\/span><\/i>\u201d and \u201c<\/span>clear cut results<\/span><\/i>\u201d and commending her caution in recognising prisons are complex places and that further research is merited.<\/span><\/p>\n The question was raised about whether the research had looked at the impact on instances of self-harm. Cynthia responded that it hadn\u2019t but was worth exploring. One of the audience observed that many instances of self-harm are expressions of frustration and they felt intuitively that self-service would have a positive impact. Another participant thought that instances of use of force by staff would be another useful indicator of behaviour change.<\/span><\/p>\n Discussion centred around the added value of in cell self-service with a number commenting that the additional benefits almost certainly outweighed the additional cost in terms of the impact on reducing re-offending \u2013 notably the access to education and programme material during the evening. One participant commented on the \u201c<\/span>endless potential<\/span><\/i>\u201d and another said that the Coates\u2019 Review into prison education had already recognised the potential impact of IT enabled education was \u201c<\/span>immense<\/span><\/i>.\u201d \u00a0\u00a0The Violence Reduction initiative in the National Offender Management Service had identified better quality in-cell activity as having the capability to reduce violence.<\/span><\/p>\n One audience member noted that the information provided showed that all private prisons in the UK had deployed Unilink\u2019s self-service and the audience thought there was a message there for the Ministry of Justice (MoJ). As part of this discussion one participant said he had been warned about trying to \u201c<\/span>do business<\/span><\/i>\u201d with the MoJ \u2013 \u201c<\/span>they find every reason why things can\u2019t happen\u2026\u2026\u2026..the sector seems closed<\/span><\/i>\u201d. However, this individual thought Professor McDougall\u2019s research was \u201c<\/span>brilliant<\/span><\/i>\u201d and reflected \u00a0positively on the number of MoJ attendees at the salon and hoped this indicated a \u201c<\/span>wind of change<\/span><\/i>\u201d.<\/span><\/p>\n Thank-you to all participants for their attendance and contribution and to Robin Knowles of Digital Leaders for chairing the event.<\/span><\/p>\n Francis Toye is the Group Founder and CEO at Unilink<\/em><\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I attended the Digital Leaders Salon yesterday about the findings of Professor Cynthia McDougall\u2019s research into prisoner self-service. There was a good attendance from public, private and third sector organisations. Cynthia outlined her experience and career and gave some background to the York University research […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":18470,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-13644","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","region-london","topic-government"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n\n