Pictured above: (l-r): Birmingham City University team and guest presenters: John Higgins (BCU) , Azam Saeed (BCU), Duncan Maidens (BCU), Nick Dickens (PICTA), Michael Furminger (Cisco), Kevin Doona (PICTA) and Richard Smith (BCU). 

A major conference for IT-instructors from prisons across the UK, has been held by Birmingham City University. The instructors are regularly trained by the University's Cisco Academy Training Centre (CATC) in order to teach prisoners practical computer network skills, so that they can re-enter society equipped for a legitimate career. 

Teaching staff attached to prisons from Kent to Lancashire attend week-long courses at Birmingham City University's CATC, to learn how to deliver training in valuable IT skills to inmates prior to their release.

A long-standing shortage of employees with ICT (Information and Communication Technology) skills in business encouraged the Department for Education and Skills (DfES) to establish the Prisons ICT Academies (PICTA) project, in partnership with IT-giant Cisco Systems, in 2004. Since then dozens of professional instructors from 30 UK prisons have regularly been trained in Birmingham City University's CATC at its Faculty of Technology Engineering and the Environment, to teach inmates computer networking skills. 

Birmingham City University is one of Cisco's key international training centres. Over five years the PICTA scheme's success has seen the programme steadily expand to include more institutions and enable professional prison instructors to undertake courses, not only in computer networking, but also in wider IT skills and cabling.

Justice Secretary Jack Straw recently launched an even more advanced Cisco partnership at HMP Wandsworth, which saw prisoners learning to install voice and data cabling. He endorsed the whole PICTA activity saying: "It is intended to provide enhanced vocational training to prisoners in order to help offenders turn away from crime, and give them back a sense of stability, discipline and responsibility."

Birmingham City University's 2009 PICTA conference at its Millennium Point campus, saw delegates introduced to a forthcoming new syllabus for the widely recognised European Computer Driving Licence (ECDL) 3-level qualification. The CATC team are seeing significant success in helping the prison instructors take the new marketable skills back into their work of offender rehabilitation. Prison staff instructors have included those re-training from other skills areas such as the seamstress who has effectively transferred her dexterity into the IT-sector.

The University's Acting Head of Computing, Telecommunications and Networks, Mak Sharma, says: "The project has been most successful. The fruit of this initiative is that the DfES is seeing ex-offenders re-enter society with sought-after ICT skills and finding jobs."

Recently, a persistent offender, with a record of over 40 sentences in 15 years since he was aged 12, proved such a successful student he became a 'peer-tutor' to his fellow inmates. On discharge from HMP Wandsworth, he became a trainer with a London-based Cisco regional academy and now has the prospect of a long-term career.

Faculty Associate Dean, Dr Peter Rayson, comments: "Birmingham City University's vision to create a new-style technology faculty, has established a lifelong learning centre serving the educational needs of every sphere of the community, from school leavers to mature managers. We are delighted to be contributing to prisoner rehabilitation, through our Cisco Academy training activities." 

Birmingham City University's CATC is one of Cisco's lead-training centres for academies covering Europe, Middle East and Africa and just one of a handful of such centres worldwide. It is responsible for 'training trainers' in some 600 regional and local academies from Norway to Namibia.