What was the process like?

We managed to get a deep understanding of problems associated with prison system by conducting in-depth interviews with people after receiving their court sentences. In combination with collaborative workshops and interviews with emerging stakeholders within whole esosystem, we realized how deep the problem is.

We've also invited participants with lived experience to our collaborative process to validate our assumptions and to co-create contents of supporting materials.

Conducting our research brought 2 key challenges that we used for later phases of ideation:

• How might we create support systems to help individuals navigate the challenging transition period between receiving a court sentence and beginning incarceration?
• How might we equip social workers with the tools and training needed to better support individuals and their families during the pre-incarceration transition period?

Outcomes

We've gone through dozens of ideas or proposals of what could possibly help to overcome two challenges above. Eventually we picked the most promising ideas and shaped them into more detail. These were:

• In-depth instructions for what one needs to get done after receiving a prison sentence in a written form
• Information architecture proposal for a site serving as knowledge base for people that have received their sentence and their families
• Training programme structure for professionals in helping professions focused on key areas where most help is needed
• Methodical questionnaire for professionals working with our target group to help them evaluate their situation and to help suggest actionable steps for their clients
• Advocation effort with key stakeholders to strenghten possible impact of our efforts
• We managed to transfer important knowledge to representatives of several social services participating in our collaborative workshops as a nice side-effect of our effort