rehabilitation vs punishment
As a Open University tutor, I regularly went into prisons to teach basic programming courses, ranging from open prisons, to high category ones (as one prison officer said once you need to rob banks to be in here).
The main problem was access to kit and the amount of hardware time they had. It got a lot worse when a lot of the resources went online, largely cutting off the prison population, so i'm not sure how that will be dealt with
Although initially intimidating, I found most of the students pretty keen and receptive, and quite enjoyed it.
It was quite an eye opener on prisons and my attitude changed to the fact incarceration main purpose should be rehabilitation, rather than the general public view that it should be punishment, so I am generally supportive of any schemes like this
Biting the hand that feeds IT
