ROLE AND USE OF TECHNOLOGIES who had previously been serving life sentences. The programme enables prisoners to experience everyday activities such as using a bank card or using a self-scan checkout when shopping. A similar programme is being piloted in Otago prison, New Zealand, to help prisoners who have numeracy or literacy problems to learn to read and write.405 The VR programme creates a virtual environment – such as a garage – where prisoners are required to read text (such as street signs) to help aid their literacy and numeracy. While VR is still very much in the initial stages of development, there are promising signs that it can be beneficial – particularly for prisoners with dyslexia or for prisoners who have difficulties with literacy and numeracy. When they are increasingly likely to already be ‘digital natives’ and to live in a technology-dependent society on release, excluding prisoners from the digital world can exacerbate their social exclusion and impair reintegration. Conversely, increasing their access to the internet, email and computers in prison can give them 38 | the skills and abilities they need to gain employment on release. Women prisoners in Kenya have been given lessons in coding, web design and computer repair through Change Hub, a technology-focused rehabilitation programme that has enhanced prisoners’ employment prospects.406 (See Rehabilitation and reintegration, page 33). Internet use by prisoners is still in its infancy and remains prohibited or heavily restricted. The use of social media by prisoners – including Facebook, Instagram and Twitter – raises concerns about risks of fuelling criminal activities, although it can also be used to expose poor prison conditions and other human rights abuses, by providing a level of scrutiny and transparency.407 The use of social media by prisoners has seen a huge increase in recent years. In one shocking case, prisoners were able to live-tweet a riot from a prison in the south of England.408 that uses near-live operational data from prisons to build an interactive dashboard containing information on prison assaults and self-harm.409 In the US, authorities are using technology to digitise the voices of people in prison – known as voice prints – and enrol them in a large-scale biometric database.410 While such measures are seen by many authorities as beneficial to their work, they raise very real concerns about privacy rights for prisoners which demand careful scrutiny and oversight. RECOMMENDATION 20 Technological innovation provides many opportunities for improving the efficient functioning of criminal justice systems and supporting the rehabilitation of prisoners. It should not be used in a way that reduces human contact for prisoners or infringes their right to privacy. There has been an increase in the use of ‘big data’ as a management tool in prisons. In the UK, the Ministry of Justice is rolling out a project Penal Reform International and Thailand Institute of Justice | Global Prison Trends 2019