Evaluations
The Arts of Desistance: Evaluation of the Koestler Trust Arts Mentoring Programme for Former Prisoners
This report presents and discusses the findings of an evaluation of an arts-based mentoring scheme that is aimed at prolonging and enhancing desistance from crime through providing former prisoners with opportunities to continue engaging with the arts after release. The evaluation focused both on the implementation and effectiveness of the ... read on →
Write to be Heard: Supporting Offender Learning through Creative Writing
The report explores the impact of a creative writing programme developed to engage ‘hard to reach’ learners in prison. The mechanism was a creative writing competition, incorporating a schedule of workshops in 28 prisons, encouraging entrants to write pieces for broadcast on National Prison Radio (NPR). Using qualitative and quantitative ... read on →
Sounding Out - Jim Cartwright
The report followed Music in Prisons as they ran a pilot ‘through the gate’ project which, through music, aimed to provide longer-term rehabilitative opportunities to previous project participants in order to help bridge the gap between life inside and out prison. The key aims were to assist reintegration; impact on ... read on →
Family Man: 2012-13 Evaluation Scope
The purpose of this evaluation is to demonstrate the long-term impact and cost-effectiveness of Family Man to policy makers, funders, prisons and practitioners; and to complement Gwyneth Boswell’s qualitative study of the revised Family Man and other previous evaluations. read on →
An Evaluation of a Pilot Study of a Literature-Based Intervention with Women in Prison
This study investigated whether ‘Get Into Reading’, a literature-based intervention, which had been established in other custodial contexts and non-custodial mental health settings in the UK transposed to a female prison; HMP Low Newton, and whether any of the benefits identified in custodial and non-custodial contexts elsewhere were reported by ... read on →
An evaluation of the Artist in Residence at HMP Grendon
Through observation and interviews with inmates and staff,this report documents the process of developing an artistic residency in a Therapeutic Community prison and provides an evaluation of the impact on those taking part. Based on observations across four prison wings and interviews with sixteen inmates, this report is able to conclude that ... read on →
Inspiring Change: Final Project Report of the Evaluation Team
An evaluation of a series of arts-based interventions across the Scottish criminal justice system, focusing on the impact of engagement in these programmes on offenders’ attitudes and behaviours as well as their ability to learn.The findings concentrate on examining the quality of the arts experience, the people and processes involved, ... read on →
The Great Escape: exploring the rehabilitative dynamics involved in 'Changing Tunes'
The goal of this report is to develop a 'logic model' that can account for how Changing Tunes (CT) works as a rehabilitative strategy, outlining both the dynamic processes involved and their immediate/short-term and medium/longer-term impacts on the lives of participants. This analysis identified seven, key elements of the CT ... read on →
Developments in the HM Prison Service and Safe Ground Family Man programme, and the Safe Ground Network during 2007-8: An independent review
The purpose of this evaulation was to examine the developments Safe Ground had made to one of its prison interventions, Family Man, and to the Safe Ground network during the period 2007-08 following recommendations made in previous reviews. It utilised semi structured qualitative face to face interviews, telephone interviews and questionnaires ... read on →
Beats & Bars - Music in Prisons: An Evaluation
The report evaluated a series of five-day music projects which took place in eight men’s prisons across England from October 2007 to July 2008. The evaluation was aimed at understanding the impact of the project on its participants’ engagement with purposeful activities whilst in prison. In particular the impact of ... read on →
Evaluation of Dancing Inside: a creative workshop by Motionhouse Dance Theatre_yr 2 programme
This present study examines year two of the Dancing Inside project:Motionhouse Dance Theatre workshops conducted with prisoners in HMP Dovegate’s Therapeutic Community. Its aim was to provide evidence for the short term impacts of participating in the workshops and also to examine the longer term gains made by dance participants. ... read on →
