WIREDGOV

You can tell a session is worthwhile when the people who weren’t intended to be in the room pull up chairs and stay. That’s exactly what happened when Breakthrough’s Pratik Doshi delivered a session on AI, the digital economy, and life after release inside a UK prison, in partnership with the Saracens Foundation. The session was designed for the men serving sentences. But midway through, prison staff stopped what they were doing, sat down, and joined in the same session themselves.

The hunger for AI literacy doesn’t belong to one demographic or one side of a wall. It belongs to everyone who can feel the economy shifting beneath their feet and wants to understand what comes next.

What this article covers: This article examines what an AI and employability session delivered inside a UK prison revealed about the untapped capabilities of people in the criminal justice system. It explores why the skills the future economy rewards (adaptability, problem-solving, resilience) already exist in these communities, and what meaningful infrastructure for progression looks like.

The skills are already in the room

Why people in prison already have the capabilities the future economy rewards

There’s a persistent assumption that people in prison need to be built up from nothing. That the work begins at zero. That the starting point is deficit.

The people in that room told a different story. Former business owners. People who had navigated survival in conditions most of us will never face. People who had made decisions with imperfect information, adapted under pressure, and managed risk not as a theoretical exercise but as a daily reality.

Problem-solving. Resilience. Adaptability. Risk assessment. These are not soft skills. They are not peripheral. They are the exact capabilities that every future-of-work report, every employer survey, and every AI strategy paper identifies as essential. The economy that is emerging doesn’t just need coders. It needs people who can think, pivot, and build.

When we frame people in prison as lacking, we miss what is already there. The capability exists. What’s missing is the infrastructure to recognise it, develop it, and connect it to opportunity.

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