Prisoners in England to be taught code

[Aeolienne]

(Not written by me)

Prisoners in England to be taught code

The government is to fund a scheme that will see "carefully vetted" prisoners taught to code in order to better prepare them for the world of work.

The project is part of a £1.2m effort to increase the digital skills of people from disadvantaged groups.

The courses will be led by volunteers and industry experts and prisoners will work on real-world projects with external clients.

They will start with basic coding before moving to a more advanced level.

An award of £100,000 will be given to fund the project in two prisons initially - Humber [nr Everthorpe, Brough, East Yorkshire] and Holme House, [Stockton on Tees] in County Durham - as well as an employment hub in Sheffield.

The hope is that the trials will eventually lead to a network of coding workshops in UK prisons.

The programme is modelled on the Last Mile project in the San Quentin prison, in California, which has helped almost 500 offenders find jobs after release, with none of those taking part reoffending.

That compares with a national reoffending rate in the US of 55%.

Reoffending in the UK is estimated to cost around £15bn, according to the Department of Digital, Culture, Media and Sport.

Minster for Digital Margot James said: "The government is committed to stopping the cycle of reoffending and a valuable asset to prevent recidivism is employment.

"Equipping offenders with coding skills will help them into life-changing work and give them a path to a hugely rewarding career."

Neil Barnby, who has been teaching coding to prisoners at HMP Humber, as part of an organisation called Code4000, said: "The workshops are reducing reoffending at a measurable rate, because we keep in touch with our graduates.

"We are constantly seeing success after success.

"When I started teaching in prisons, I thought that if I could change just one life, turn one person away from crime, then I have achieved something truly marvellous.

"I look back on the years that I have been teaching coding in prisons and can see all the lives I have had a part in changing for the better.

"Not just the ex-offenders but their families and, more importantly, their children.

"It is an enormous sense of achievement - and with this funding, I look forward to changing even more lives."

Prisoners will learn HTML, CSS and Javascript, before moving on to more advanced concepts such as Git, TDD, MVC, databases and full stack development.

They will then work on real-world projects for external clients, with money earned being ploughed back into the project.

Stage three of the process will see them working for clients on temporary day release, with the aim of helping them find full-time employment as developers when their jail terms are complete.

Source: BBC News

 

[GadAbout]

oh ho ho ho ho. I know where this is going. Prisoners will become hackers, big time, after release or even from prison.

I'd feel more comfortable with them learning auto mechanics or similar.

 

[Mary Terry]

I don't know about the UK but here in the US, many prisoners are virtually illiterate. Their lack of education and marketable skills is often identified as one of the main reasons they got into trouble with the law in the first place. It would take some serious fundamental education to teach average American prisoners anything about coding.

 

[Mary Terry]

oh ho ho ho ho. I know where this is going. Prisoners will become hackers, big time, after release or even from prison.

I'd feel more comfortable with them learning auto mechanics or similar.

LOL. Then they could hot wire cars! Which they can learn how to do from cellmates. Or, just stick a gun in a driver's face and car jack the driver and vehicle which they do here on a fairly regular basis. My sister was nearly carjacked 2 weeks ago on a 4 lane highway where traffic was stalled due to a shoot out/armed burglary, criminal crashed his vehicle into a nearby building and fled on foot situation. The car immediately to her right was carjacked by the thug. Sister (who works for local sheriff's office) said she could not believe the female driver rolled down her window to hear what the thug wanted!

Seriously, I'm in favor of trying to educate prisoners and helping them find a lawful way to live after release from prison. I'm dubious that coding is the best subject matter for them to learn.

 

[Judge]

It seems quite often that when lay mentalities think of website design, that it seldom goes beyond a simple understanding of HTML and CSS. - Ouch.

There's so much more to what people so cavalierly refer to as "coding".

Sounds like a great deal of taxpayers' money and effort on the part of a few experts and bureaucrats to eventually yield a tiny number of convicts with skills sufficient to meet the needs of very few entry level jobs in a perpetually competitive industry.

That eventually it will be determined that the number of viable prospects won't justify the cost. Being a successful website designer involves far more than assessing the raw talent of a painter discovered behind bars. I just hope that's not the mentality behind such a plan.

 

[Graphin]

I'd much better go for basic computer usage and IT compotency and security for most people - most people tend to suffer from the simplest cases of PICNIC (Problem in chair, not in computer). Prison bureocracy as it looks there is likely bad at teaching coding anyways.
The most effective way to teach prisoners coding and computer literacy is to just give them free access, well good luck on that.

 

[FreeDiver]

I don't know about the UK but here in the US, many prisoners are virtually illiterate. Their lack of education and marketable skills is often identified as one of the main reasons they got into trouble with the law in the first place. It would take some serious fundamental education to teach average American prisoners anything about coding.

And there's an even more disturbing trend to go along with that as well. Fact: Did you know that is cost more to incarcerate a person for one year then it is to put them through Yale University for a year. Tuition at Yale is about $50K. Incarceration is about about $70K.

 

[Judge]

And there's an even more disturbing trend to go along with that as well. Fact: Did you know that is cost more to incarcerate a person for one year then it is to put them through Yale University for a year. Tuition at Yale is about $50K. Incarceration is about about $70K.

Could be much worse. And it is. Incarceration and costs for legal appeals of death row inmates are staggering all across the country.

"A new study of Louisiana’s death penalty reports that the state’s capital punishment system costs taxpayers at least $15.6 million a year more than a system with life without parole as the maximum sentence."

Study Finds Louisiana Spends An… | Death Penalty Information Center

Luckily in Britain's case they don't execute anyone anymore. Though perhaps they probably had a less expensive appeals process when they did hang people.

 

[johnsmith1981]

John Carmack, one of the creators of Doom, was sent to juvie hall for breaking into a high school lab to steal some Apple 2s.

Coders and outlaws are often very close in my mind

 

[Bolletje]

I think it’s a great idea to teach prisoners skills that will help them return to society and find a job.

 

[AloneNotLonely]

The problem with these sorts of programs is that they always filter the prisoners taking part and then boast amazing results (All 500 prisoners found work and none reoffended compared to 55% on a national scale). The prison population has a far lower IQ than the average population, which is what caused them to become criminals in the first place. By filtering the population based on ability to learn how to code (in other words, the highest IQ's they can find in the prisons) they are going to include the prisoners that would have a far lower reoffending rate in the first place. It's the serial offenders they need to get out of the system, and there's no "program" that will do so. It sounds amazing but this will never solve anything. It's just a huge waste of money.

Simple forced labor is probably the best economic solution, or the death penalty without death row. There's obvious issues with both considering how corrupt the legal system is.