Partnerships Directory

The Crito Project is an organisation whose purpose is to provide a degree-level education in philosophy, logic and ethics to prisoners serving their sentences in the East of England. The Project has been active since 2013 and has expanded to the point where it is delivering education across three prisons. The Crito Project’s academic provision is overseen and endorsed by the University of East Anglia’s Philosophy Department. Expectations of the course director are high, and pupils are taught to a degree level, with the assumption being that educational achievement is predicated upon both frankness and equality.

The first Inside-Out course with Teesside University at HMP Holme House was established in 2016 and takes the central concern of social justice and explores this in the local context, tracing connections between global forces and local effects on the economy and industry, poverty and inequality, as well as crime and criminal justice. Undergraduate criminology and sociology students study alongside a cohort from HMP Holme House on a 14-week accredited module engaging with critical discussions and group work within an equal, positive and passionate learning environment.

University postgraduate students meet monthly with prison-based students in peer-run sessions at HMPs Shotts, Greenock and Barlinnie to discuss academic texts in social sciences, humanities and physical sciences. The aim is to reproduce the kinds of reading groups typically available in universities as part of a liberal arts educational philosophy and which support: group based learning, discussion and debate skills, critical analytical skills, close reading, high level textual engagement and knowledge acquisition.

Undergraduate Criminology students from Royal Holloway have been studying ‘Contemporary Social Issues’ alongside learners in HMYOI Feltham, and students from University of Westminster. The programme has a strong study skills element, supporting Royal Holloway students as they make the transition into Higher Education, while also providing the young men at Feltham with valuable transferable skills, both for future study and for employability. In 2017 Serena Wright and Rosie Meek ran a module titled ‘Pioneering Women,’ offered to students from RHUL and prison learners in HMP Bronzefield.

The first Learning Together course between Nottingham Trent University and HMP Lowdham Grange piloted in the 2016/17 academic year, and was themed around the theory, policy and practice of Criminology and Education Studies. The eight-week course is intended as a study of, an exploration, and discussion into the value of lifelong learning, and the benefits of education provision for all. Delivered by Nottingham Trent University academics, learning is facilitated by a combination of seminars and discussions. A Sociology course now runs in Lowdham Grange and in HMP Sudbury.

“This whole experience for me has been crazy and beautiful. Would I call it a success? Yes- definitely.”

Lecturers at Newman University started in late 2016 a programme of Higher Education in HMP Birmingham called ‘Going Straight to University’. Modelled within the framework of Learning Together and inspired by Baz Dreisinger’s Prison to College Pipeline in John Jay College in New York, this partnership seeks to provide credits to prisoner learners that will provide a meaningful springboard into higher education on release.

One of the main things that drew me to it was the fact that it was going to be this very immersive experience that had two elements of society that don’t necessarily overlap very frequently.

The Middlesex module ‘Contemporary Issues in Criminal Justice’ is taught over 10 weeks and covers topics on the sociology of crime and deviance, youth justice, criminal court sentencing, and comparative prison perspectives. Each session comprises a lecture, set readings and small group discussions co-ordinated by group facilitators to advance ideas, debate, and formulate new, reflective, and experiential knowledge.

“The course was a time and space for students to learn in a new environment however it represents more than that. The personal and academic connections the students are making are transcending the physical boundaries imposed on them.”

An optional addition to an undergraduate degree in education, the partnership took eight LSBU students into HMP Pentonville, where they joined 12 Pentonville students to take a module on Education for Social Justice. This diverse group explored how education is used as a tool for social change and the factors that might influence that such as history, curriculum, theories of learning, technology and assessment.

“The learners realised that philosophy is a human endeavour that is accessible to all participants, particularly as it opened their minds and hearts to their predicament and place in the world.”

A social science research methods course ran in HMPYOI Isis between January and March 2017 with Open Book at Goldsmiths, University of London – involving 18 learners in total, 16 of whom were under 25 years old. The Open Book Project aims to break down the barriers to higher education for people from a wide range of non-traditional backgrounds including, offending, addiction and mental health. The guest lecturers were ex-prisoners who had significant personal experience with the prison context and were currently studying and/or researching prisons.

“The students from Edinburgh Napier University came and one helped me in the class which was very good because it gave you one-to-one education. I have learned a lot by coming to the class here. I never used to write letters or poetry or read a lot, but now I have the confidence to do more.”

Undergraduates in Edinburgh Napier’s School of Arts and Creative Industries can complete a placement at HMP Edinburgh’s learning centre, working alongside prison education staff. Undergraduate students in Photography, Film and Television can participate in a media project, working with young people at HMYOI Polmont to collaboratively produce film and photographs. Learners at Polmont get peer support in developing a range of photographic and film-making techniques. This project won a Herald Higher Education award, for Widening Access.