• We wanted to build that network of front-line staff, so crucial to prisoner rehabilitation. We wanted to bond them together with peers a working group of dedicated professionals, and to their different socio-cultural views on digital rehabilitation with the common purpose of crime free behaviour on release. • We wanted to provide an alternative training to the dominant ‘cyber-security’ narrative of digitalisation in prison, where prison staff are trained on technology used to survey and enforce, that is designed and operated by the tech-savvy of younger generations. Instead, the WGs/ interviews/ workshop/ case studies offered a ‘low-hanging fruit’ of digital training, easy to access, fun to participate in and built on exchange and empathy and motivated by connections with peers and by the mission of crime-free communities. • We wanted prisons/ staff trainers/ prison administrations to learn from each other’s experience so that known barriers to digital change did not keep happening in each new pilot implemented. These barriers include HOW technology is implemented, not just WHAT technology is used. • We aimed at the end of the project for our WG participants to know about and feel part of a bigger international move towards
This partnership constitutes half of the original DIGICOR KA2 VET partnership. From the barriers to digital change that the DIGICOR project, we could see that it wasn’t only to do with the technology used, but the way that people were trained to use it. We identified a need for • A broader reach, to train ALL prison staff – regardless of what they know or understand about digital technology – to bring the prison in line with other public services, to make digital rehabilitation really achieve reintegration, to make the prison service an attractive employer. • Motivation to learn about digital rehabilitation. Personalised training experience that was easy access -inside the walls of their prison - and informal peer support/ exchange to broaden their awareness of how digital systems can improve how effective a prison is. Talking and exchange we needed to create an empathic response to how digital competencies can improve an individual inmate’s chances of reintegration upon release. • A low-level, easy access training opportunity, that was not intimidating, and not just aimed at the ‘tech generation’, but at all staff. • Sustained access to a learning community - exchange as a regular fixture, not just a one-off.