London: Give Prisoners Laptops and Broadband: MPs have called for major reforms to prison education, which they found to be in a ‘perilous state due to a continual decline in funding’. A report by the all-party Education Committee, published last month, found that education in prisons “plays a key role in changing lives and improving people’s futures”. Among the improvements, the MPs want to see are in-cell laptop computers with secure internet access for all prisoners who are studying, wider access to student loans, and a Deputy Governor of Learning appointed at every jail.
Other recommendations include: * Prisoners taking part in education should be paid at least as much as those in prison jobs; *All prisoners should have a ‘Digital Education Passport’ which follows them around the estate, so that education does not start afresh each time they are transferred to a new jail; *Educational needs should be taken into account when deciding when and where prisoners should be transferred; *A rule which makes prisoners with more than six years left to serve ineligible for student loans should be scrapped.
MPs pointed to a report by Dame Sally Coates in 2016, which said that education should be put at the heart of the prison system. They warned of “missed opportunities” and said: “Six years later, we are concerned that this aspiration has still not been realised.”
Read more: Inside Time, https://rb.gy/679hph
