Prisoners’ lack of digital skills a ‘ticking time bomb’, warns expert

Failing to educate our prisoners in digital skills is a catastrophe in waiting, a leading digital education expert has warned.

With Friday October 13th marking the International Day of Education in Prison, the founder of digital learning company Coracle has said that we must act now to ensure our prisoners have the skills to operate in a digital world.

“Many of our prisoners are re-entering a very different society to the one they left behind,” explained Tweed.

“It’s also clear the level of digital exclusion we’re seeing right now is causing a serious divide in society. Many of us are enjoying the benefits and opportunities provided by the digital age.

“But what is also painfully obvious to anyone working in prison education is that a sizeable part of the population is being left behind. This gap is only going to get wider unless we ensure everyone is able to gain digital skills.

Tweed says many prisoners lack even the most basic of digital skills. “I’ve met inmates who simply don’t know how to move a cursor on a screen, others who cannot fathom a mobile phone.

“These are people who leave prison without the ability to do simple day-to-day things such as access a bank account online or fill in a digital benefit application form, activities which most of us would now take for granted.

“A lack of digital skills can and does lead to reoffending. Former prisoners just don’t know how to survive in a digital world so they return to their old neighbourhoods and associates and get drawn back into crime.

“Watching this exclusion increase when you understand the implications is horrifying, it’s like watching a ticking time bomb.

“International Day of Education in Prison falls on Friday 13th this year, perhaps a fateful sign that we fail to educate our prisoners at our peril. But we’re working to change that for good.”

Tweed points out that the Ministry of Justice’s own figures show that reoffending currently costs taxpayers over £18bn a year. Yet he says we could educate all prisoner for a fraction of that amount.

Coracle, which won a King’s Award for Enterprise in April 2023, now provides inmates at 86 prisons across England and Wales with access to laptops which they can use in their cells for learning.

Its offline virtual learning environment can be supplied to a prisoner for as little as just a few hundred pounds per year.

“We could affordably provide all prisoners with access to education via a laptop and help them gain vital digital skills before release. I’d love this ‘International Day of Education in Prison’ to be the day when that decision was made.”