Opportunities for digital technologies
Online technology is becoming increasingly central to how people communicate and organise their lives It enables a world of information to be at your fingertips, low-cost quick methods of communication and not to mention the vast growth of social media in its various forms.
The creation and mass adoption of new technologies combined with shifts in consumer expectation provides many opportunities for application of Digital Technology within Prisons.
Internet kiosks like this one, by Protec UK, could help facilitate various communications and other program based systems utilising DigitalTechnology.
The following describes a few ideas for where digital technologies could be used to make prisons more effective;
Suicide prevention during first two weeks of prison
Research has shown that prisoners in the early period of custody have the highest risk of suicide and self harm.17 Statistics show that one third of suicides occur within the first week, and 1/7th within the first two days of imprisonment.18 During the first one to two weeks of a stay in prison there could be the ability for prisoners to have unlimited access to social networking based systems; enabling them to communicate with family, friends or other support services. These could be interfaces that work directly with volunteers or could be restricted versions of social networking services.
By reducing the abrupt and lonely cut-off from a person’s support and conversation from their friends and family support could help to reduce feelings of extreme depression and isolation, and feelings of their life being ‘over’ after going to prison it could help reduce suicide.
Challenges: Abuse is a primary issue, for prisoners who have been convicted before it is potentially less of an issue and it can be restricted from those with organised crime based backgrounds to prevent furthering criminal activity. At any rate conversation can be recorded.
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‘Feeds’ for family and friends
Friends and family could subscribe to feeds, possibly with permission acceptance by the prisoner, where it can update them with movements or other events relevant to the prisoners stay in prison. It could be based online, or also through mobile phone applications. The system could provide information of prisoner moves, disciplinary actions, exam and test results or provide updates if a prisoner was to publish diary items or articles. Such a system could integrate with online booking for visits and information and links to other prison related services.
Keeping family and friends in-the-loop regarding a prisoners life could help to keep them in mind and improve connections.
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Combating offending behavior
There is opportunity for allowing prisoners to publish blogs or articles; this could be through answering structured questions as part of a course, enabling members of the public, family or friends to submit feedback and comments. This would enable prisoners to ‘face up’ to the public to some extent and dialogue could be very beneficial between them and people in different situations or with different points of view.
Beyond social networking websites, he act of publishing of view and opinions is something that prisoners in the main are unlikely to have done before in a public context and such an experience could bring benefits on various levels.
An increase of positive engagement between prisoners and the community could help to provide links with various people who may be willing to offer help or support, this could include the ability for people to offer mentorship, provide links with religious groups or other forms of support, employers and even ex-offenders wishing to provide advice to prisoners. Prisoners and prison staff could also be able to provide feedback for articles.
Challenges: Abuse again is an issue, however with the ability for monitoring and pre-publication censorship of comments and articles it can be effectively managed. As it is inherently a recorded communication, prisoners who misuse the system would be affecting their chances of parole.
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General communications
General Communication to and for prisoners regarding the plethora of prison communications could be done using digital technologies. On the other hand communication between family and friends and prisoners could be facilitated using digital technologies making it more efficient and lower cost. There is also the potential to improve communications between prisoners and their children through digital communication be it text, video or verbally based.
Challenges: The volume of communications could be significantly higher than when using written mail, and as such, there is the possibility that constraints on the number of mails sent by prisoners may need to be limited. Monitoring the messages can be done using keyword identification tools already used by the Government, but could also be monitored by off-shore staff and flagged for prison staff to review if suspicious; to improve the cost effectiveness of the communication system.
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Visit booking system
There is an obvious application of internet technology for the creation of a system to allow easy booking of visits for family friends. It can take in to account the number of visits a prisoner is able to have, schedules of prison visits and allow family and friends to book well in advance and provide information required to check them in to the prison.
The system could link up with internal information points where prisoners are able to accept or reject visitors making a system far more efficient and reducing staff time. If these information points doubled up to provide other services the costs could be low on the ‘prisoner’ side otherwise the electronic interface on the prisoner side is not really necessary; the key beneficiary of such a system would be family and friends.
Booking systems could also work in future on mobile phone applications, enabling more people to access the service.
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Education systems that link with outside world
Education systems to run courses and exams could enable prisoners to finish courses or education programs when they leave prison. There is the possibility to use digital technologies to bring training courses for companies or other employment opportunities into prisons enabling prisoners to become job-ready on release.
Such a system, if coupled with an Employer Subsidisation Scheme, could prove very effective at reducing reoffending.
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Collaborative projects
There is the potential to set briefs for prisoners and enable them to try and collaboratively research and create solutions for problems, which could include issues with prisons or prison systems. Although more of a ‘wild card’ idea there is certainly scope for the use of the wasted thinking capacity of prisoners.
