James Tweed has always been intrigued by the act of learning in isolation. He began his career as a shipping derivatives trader and founded a company to provide education to people on board ships who “didn't have much internet.” In recent years, he's discovered a new group of learners who also don't have access to the internet: prisoners.
James Tweed has always been intrigued by the act of learning in isolation. He began his career as a shipping derivatives trader and founded a company to provide education to people on board ships who “didn't have much internet.” In recent years, he's discovered a new group of learners who also don't have access to the internet: prisoners.
Coracle Online has now distributed 2,600 laptops with educational software to most UK prisons — one for every 30 inmates — and the results may suggest that digital education could have an advantage once internet distractions are removed.
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Coracle Online has now distributed 2,600 laptops with educational software to most UK prisons — one for every 30 inmates — and the results may suggest that digital education could have an advantage once internet distractions are removed.
While online learning offers many possibilities, such as more efficient delivery of lessons through platforms like Google Classroom, constant internet connections also bring noise. Connected learners are more likely to struggle to stay focused on the task at hand because of their smartphones or web-connected Chromebooks.
It's no wonder that banning cell phones in the classroom leads to better grades, and high school teachers say that their students find it more tiring to read long passages without regular breaks. Recent studies have recommended that teachers should interact more with students when teaching online to keep their attention, and that students should turn on their cameras to keep them accountable.
Compare this to attempts to provide education in prisons, which historically have been stone-age, essentially distance learning using pen and paper. The Chromebooks that Coracle distributes to inmates offer something reminiscent of the pre-internet days of Encyclopedia Britannica CDs.
The educational content is varied, but is blocked from the internet for security reasons, including preventing prisoners from planning illegal acts or contacting victims. Inmates using Coracle Chromebooks typically use the devices in their cells for several hours each day, reading magazine articles and watching videos of higher education courses offered by other educational institutions.
The only downside to being offline is that if inmates want to learn more about a subject like criminal justice, there are no hyperlinks to click to read more. Some inmates found this frustrating, according to Paul Hamilton, one of the authors of a recent Nottingham Trent University study that tracked five inmates using Coracle laptops.
Still, they all completed the courses and assessments, “and in many cases scored highly,” Hamilton says. The benefits are not only better job prospects upon parole, but also greater empowerment, agency and self-confidence — vague concepts that are crucial for reintegrating into society and avoiding the risk of reoffending.
There are already widespread efforts to use digital devices to educate prisoners in the US, with several states moving forward with plans to distribute tablets and Zoom lessons, but some of these programs charge high fees and appear exploitative.
A group called The Last Mile says that about 4% of graduates of digital courses like coding and web development have a recidivism rate that's tiny compared with the national average of 61%. Some graduates have gone on to jobs at tech companies like Slack, Zoom and Dropbox, but the students never have direct access to the internet.
There are no clear solutions in criminal justice. One participant in the Nottingham Trent study, which ran from 2023 to 2024, dropped out early, and another said he spent the first two weeks playing chess on a Chromebook. But he eventually stuck with the course and completed it, just like the others.
Education for prisoners is clearly effective: in the UK, around three-fifths of prisoners leave prison without employment or education, yet research shows that when prisoners take part in any form of education, recidivism rates fall by 20% to 40%.
With any luck, Coracle will be able to secure more contracts with the British prison system, run as Her Majesty's Prison and Probation Service, and expand its educational content to become more of a walled-off microcosm of the Web than a limited edition of the Encyclopedia Britannica. Over time, participating inmates may find their isolation from the endless entertainment of the Web to be an advantage.
Hamilton points out that some of his students spend a year training as corrections officers. “What's shocking is when they finish, they say the most liberating thing about working in a prison is, 'I don't have a cell phone,'” he says. “'There's no social media noise.'” It's a definite bonus, and one that should be taken advantage of. ©bloomberg
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