Project Overview

InHouse Records is, a fully functioning Record Label that operates in Her Majesty’s prisons. The first of its kind in the UK and possibly in the world. It helps prisoners to be trained in all the different aspects of the record label from management, marketing and distribution to songwriting, musicianship and performing.

Organisation

Public

Team

The challenge is to see safer communities, less victims of crime, skilled re-purposed citizens to re-enter society and a reduction to the recidivism rate. The current UK prison service is sub optimal, we are witnessing high levels of unemployment and high levels of violence within our prisons, both of which are factors to the high recidivism rate.
Because of the 10 years I spent running a charity in Central London, dealing with people who were homeless, many of whom had been in prison, and needing to get into employment, I realised I could make a contribution; using Service Design; all that I had learnt in my first year as a service design student and my background in social transformation.
The outcome is to create an initiative that can be scaled, in order to witness a reduction in recidivism, and in doing so the objectives become to reduce violence and unemployment within UK prisons by stimulating interest and appetite to learn, develop and work.

Project Brief

The challenge was to create an initiative that significantly contributed to safer communities, less victims of crime and reduces the re-offending rate. Through extensive design work and mapping of multiple journeys of prisoners, I designed InHouse Records, the worlds first record label to be launched in a prison; where management, marketing, recording, producing and performing are roles all undertaken by the prisoners themselves.

What is the UK prison service offering today in terms of skills training?
We have acutely low interest from prisoners with less than 10% of the 86,000 prisoners in Her Majesty’s prison engaged in any kind of skills training.
There is very little offered in terms of employment within prison, so that those skills can be practiced, indeed the work offered is mundane, repetitive and is rarely linked to resettlement objectives. Which results in over 80% unemployment within prison. With the alternative to
employment being locked up in cells for almost 20 hours a day, this is a significant factor to the increase of violence in prisons, which has risen by 88% in last two years, with 27,000 serious incidents every year being reported.
Finally, there seems to be very little on offer in terms of links on the outside so that upon release help for making those steps into employment can be introduced. This is a factor to a high recidivism rate and a significant annual cost of £15Billion.

These are the drivers for InHouse Records.

Project Innovation/Need

As a result of the solid theoretical framework in CBT, SandBox Gaming and from my primary research undertaken InHouse Records has the following philosophy and principles;
1) We need to create safe and enabling environments for prisoners to build new skills
2) We need to focus on whats strong with them, not whats wrong with them, otherwise we will never have the chance to help restore their confidence, many of those in prison are entrepreneurs and can learn to repurpose skills from their past.
3) It needs to be couched in a language that recognises many of these prisoners have been inside for a long stretch and their vocabulary has reduced from 15,000 words to a 1,000
4) Its going to be sustainable in the long term, including outside of prison so that it leads them into security.
Using my Service design skills I have co-created a platform with the prisoners, making a consistent way of deploying this initiative in prisons.

A platform that can not only be applied to the music industry but other industries as well. This platform enables the prisoners to take all the different
elements of the service, and create their own unique pathway as it has been designed with the architecture of choice, or non linear interactive storytelling.
A non modular way of learning that caters for all.

Design Challenge

All my research focuses on prisoners who have been involved in organised crime, as my hypotheses was that there could be direct transferable skills. I undertook 18 months of primary ethnographic research visiting prisons and interviewing prisoners. My key findings led me to understand that most prisoners are entrepreneurs; understanding product, stock, supply, portion
pricing, flow and demand. Understanding all of these for the wrong reasons, but never the less understanding them. Why then if there is a strong entrepreneurial connection is the provision of work in prisons mundane, repetitive and rarely linked to resettlement objectives?
Understanding that 51% of the prison populace were excluded from school or never finished school, led me to the second area of research. Therefore I spent time exploring innovative and successful unorthodox educational methods from homeschooling to the world of sandbox or ‘open world’ gaming. Incorporating best practice from both. In addition, through countless interviews with
prisoners realising that anything that even slightly feels academic will create huge anxiety and the probability of self sabotage.

Blending transferable skills, that lead to work on the outside, aspiration, restorative storytelling and rehabilitation InHouse Records is making significant impact for the lives of the prisoners we work with, so much so, that we now have a waiting list of 7 prisons all wanting to have InHouse records within their jails.

Future Impact

InHouse Records is operating in four UK Prisons and has two out of prison support hubs.

We have Increased Interest in our skills training within the prisons we operate in by being 300% oversubscribed in every jail, and a waiting list of six prions.

We have Reduced Unemployment in the four prisons we operate in by providing work for over 102 people, 86% of whom had never worked in prison before. Demonstrating that the initiative is engaging with the most hardest to reach prisoner.

We have Reduced Violence in prison, witnessing an exponential growth of 428% in positive behaviour and a reduction in negative behaviour by 36%.

We are affecting the recidivism rate through our five alumni who have been released over five months, experiencing a 0% Re-Offending Rate. Two of our alumni are in full time employment and we enjoy a 100% engagement post release.

InHouse Records has been incubated by Universal Records. Our learning and developing platform has the support of the Royal College of Art and Innovation RCA. We have been supported by Ernst & Young, the Ministry of Justice, Fender guitars and Roland Instruments.