Prison Leavers Project
Ministry of Justice
February 2021 - March 2023
Location • United Kingdom
SERVICE DESIGN
RESEARCH
PROTOTYPING
About
The Prison Leavers Project was a cross-government project that works with prison leavers and stakeholders to test innovative ways to improve social inclusion of people leaving prison, and reduce reoffending.
The project had a cross-sector component formed by multidisciplinary teams with policy and front-line experience, third-sector subject matter experts, user researchers, people with lived experience in prison, and service designers.
The project also aimed to look at how design methods can be used in policy contexts. Testing and iterating ideas that could support informed policy changes and allowing policy teams to collaborate with each other towards a common goal.
What I did
I led the research and design across four workstreams, working with people in prison, people on probation, frontline staff, and senior stakeholders across the justice system.
A significant part of my work focused on the day of release, one of the most critical and precarious moments in a person's transition from custody to community. I co-designed and tested operational and policy changes to how people are supported at and immediately beyond the prison gate, including a pilot on multi-agency working that proved successful and moved into business as usual.
Across the other workstreams, I designed and ran prototypes covering a range of under-examined areas: resettlement support for people on remand, the particular challenges facing older people leaving prison, the activities people undertake inside prison to prepare for life outside, and how probation commitments on the day of release interact with everything else a person has to navigate at once. Each of these fed into policy and operational practice.
Doing research with people who have complex needs and lived experience of the justice system required particular care, building trust, working within real constraints, and ensuring insight was gathered in ways that were safe and genuinely centred on the people involved.
I also led the multidisciplinary team through design processes during the two years of cross-sector working, supporting agile ways of working and navigating the team dynamics that come with bringing together policy, operational, third-sector, and lived experience perspectives.