Written evidence submitted by Dr Maggie Leese, Ms Laura Goldsack, Dr Victoria Bell and Ms Jennifer Ferguson, Teesside University: Education Committee call for evidence on Prison Education – Teesside University Submission

As a group of criminologists, we have experience working in collaboration with HMPPS in the delivery of a Higher Education in our local prison HMP Holme House and have set up and supported a reading group within HMP Kirklevington Grange. In addition, we are prison researchers and have carried out research studies in both the male and female estate. Our expertise sits within the research team titled Co-producing Alcohol, Criminal Justice and Public Health Research within the Centre for Social Innovation in the School for Social Science, Humanities and Law. Within this we have a prisons special interest group that includes both academic staff,researchers and PhD students and to ensure we can feed into the national debate’s around imprisonment, we are aligned with the British Society of Criminology PrisonResearch Network.