Prisoners spend up to 23 hours per day in their cells. Although there may be opportunities for them to learn within secure institutions, including dedicated digital training centres, these may be inaccessible for much of the time.
Research has shown that if a prisoner engages in learning and training while detained, this significantly reduces the likelihood that they will re-offend. A wide range of learning opportunities exist within secure institutions, including the Virtual Campus, which provides a platform for all digital learning across prisons in England and Wales. But if prisoners are to benefit from these opportunities, they need to be made available where prisoners are for the greatest proportion of their time: in cells.
Following extensive research and trials, Meganexus adopted a “differentiated offering” approach, which provided a suite of technical solutions to accommodate the widely differing environments in which in cell learning needed to take place. Once the project had established a viable approach, it was branded “VC2go” and confirmed as the official in cell learning platform for the Ministry of Justice. The technical solutions developed ranged from fully online provision where Wifi or cabling was available, to offline devices with content uploaded periodically at a central location. VC2go is now being rolled out across the prison estate.