From 2010-2015, the Winston Churchill Memorial Trust funded Travelling Fellowships with a particular focus on prison reform across the world. These Fellowships, arranged in partnership with the Prison Reform Trust, were established at a time when the prison population in England and Wales had all but doubled in twenty years. With over 84,000 people currently in prison the Fellowships offer a way of learning about how other countries respond to crime and whether a similar approach could be taken here. This brief overview highlights some of the learning from these Fellowships.
The theme of this series of briefings is ‘connections’. Many Churchill Fellows visited interventions which seek to forge strong, positive connections among and between individuals, groups and organisations – including individuals’ sense of self and connection to their own actions. Whether explicitly or implicitly, the forging of these connections is seen as central to efforts to prevent offending, reduce reoffending and tackle the harms associated with offending.