Impact Conference

Natasha is the CEO and founder of Unlocked Graduates. She developed the concept while working with Dame Sally Coates on her review into prison education and has led the organisation from its inception in 2016. Since then, Unlocked Graduates has recruited nearly 900 graduates to be prison officers, working in 38 prisons across England and Wales, currently reaching more than 30,000 prisoners.

Jordan is an associate professor in the Department of Criminology and Justice Studies, and serves as director of the Center for Public Policy, at Drexel University. Much of his recent work has focused on action research within the carceral environment. This has included projects on programming, staff well-being, and prison climate. With Synøve N. Andersen, he is the co-project lead of the Scandinavian Prison Project, a broad-based effort to restructure the social, operational and administrative systems that govern how officers and incarcerated people experience their time living and working on a Scandinavian-inspired housing unit.

Lady Edwina is a prominent reformer, who has spent the last 20 years combining her expertise as a criminologist, prison philanthropist and campaigner to radically improve the outcomes of those who come into contact with our justice system. She is the Founder and Chair of One Small Thing, which aims to redesign the way women and their children experience the justice system. In 2023, she opened Hope Street, a pioneering purpose-built residential space for justice-involved women. She is also a founding investor and Ambassador of the Clink Restaurant chain and has advised the government as part of the Women’s Advisory Board for Female Offenders.

Debs Butler is the North Team Leader at HM Inspectorate of Prisons. She joined the Prison Service in 1993, working in prisons across the East and West Midlands. She was a Deputy Govenor in two prisons and then governed two prisons. In 2016 she joined HM Inspectorate of Prisons and led the HMIP’s thematic review last year into ‘Improving Behaviour in Prisons’. Debs is driven by a desire to make custody more rehabilitative and to influence the development of leadership capability across our prisons.

Peter has recently become the Director of HMP Five Wells after a long and successful tenure as Director at HMP Rye Hill. Peter is an experienced Prison Director and is driving positive change and improvement at HMP Five Wells.

Tony Wright is Therapeutic Practitioner who has worked in the contracted prisons sector for the last 16 and a half years. He began working as a Prison Custody Officer and Therapy Group Facilitator in 2008 before completing Groupwork Practitioner training and moving into the role of Group Therapist. Currently, Tony is a Therapeutic Community Lead overseeing the clinical function on a Democratic Therapeutic Community at HMP Dovegate.

Tony has an interest in the development of identity and is working towards the completion of an MA in Consulting and Leading in Organisations: Psychodynamic and Systemic Approaches.

Molly is an Unlocked Ambassador from our 2019 cohort.  She is now a Prison Officer Specialist for Therapeutic Delivery at HMP Grendon.

Paul has worked with Unlocked for several years and is one of our trainers.  Paul has lived experience of the criminal justice system and is able to share his wealth of knowledge and experience of the impact of therapeutic communities on rehabilitation.

Jennie works within the Offender Personality Disorder (OPD) Pathway central team and is the thematic lead responsible for Democratic Therapeutic Communities and Pathway Enhanced Resettlement Services (PERS). Jennie joined the Prison Service as a Prison Officer in 2002 and worked in a number of operational roles across several prisons. She was offered a secondment into the OPD team to oversee the DTCs in 2013 and was so enthused by the work of the Pathway, she took up a permanent position in 2015. She has maintained her responsibility for the DTCs; was a part of the team to launch the TC+ services for men with learning disabilities in 2014, and in 2021 added the PERS services to her portfolio, working with the Open estate for the first time.

Jamie Williams has worked in the prison service for 25 years, with the majority of his career spent working with children in custody. Over two years ago Jamie became the Communities, Partnership & Enrichment manager for the YOI at HMP Parc, where he designed and developed a child-focused enrichment programme that targets children’s self-esteem, team work, problem solving, communication and leadership skills. He won the Butler Trust Award in 2024 for his outstanding work.

Victoria is the Head of Education, Skills and Work at HMP Buckley Hall. Her role is setting the strategic direction for all of education, skills and work within the prison. This involves developing a coherent approach to all areas of “Education, Skills and Work”, ensuring that sequencing of activities is purposeful and directed towards maximising prisoners’ opportunities to access employment, education and training on release. With over 16 years’ experience in post-compulsory education, she has served as a Deputy Head of a Sixth Form and a Head of Department prior to becoming the Head of a Sixth Form College.

Ian is currently the Prison Group Director responsible for the operational delivery and strategic development of establishments in London. He previously served as the Governor at HMP Pentonville and prior to that, as the Governor at HMP Bedford and HMP Bullingdon. He has a particular interest in drug rehabilitation in prisons and the impact such initiatives can have on safety.

Karan was appointed Ambassador Network Manager in May 2022. He is a 2018 Unlocked Graduates Ambassador having spent two years as a frontline Prison Officer on the programme and former Ambassador Board Trustee of Unlocked Graduates. Karan is responsible for managing and working with the Unlocked Ambassador Community and supports ambassadors to continue working toward the mission of reducing re-offending beyond their two years on the programme.

Samantha is responsible for the development and oversight of Unlocked ChangeMakers, a new 12 month leadership development programme to train and support Custodial Managers (CMs) to become leaders of rehabilitative change in prisons. She has held various positions at Unlocked, most recently as Head of Delivery.

Alex is a writer and former prison officer with over ten years experience working in the prison system. As a Churchill Fellow, she has visited prisons around the world conducting research into the wellbeing of prison officers. Her 2023 memoir ‘Behind These Doors’ was selected as a BBC Radio 4 Book of the Week and Waterstones Best Politics Books of 2023. Alex is currently Special Advisor to the parliamentary inquiry, ‘Prison Culture: Governance, Leadership and Staffing’.

Yvonne Jewkes is Professor of Criminology at the University of Bath, and a world leading expert on prison architecture and design. She is author of An Architecture of Hope: Reimagining the Prison, Restoring a House, Rebuilding Myself (Scribe, 2024), which has recently been featured in The Guardian, the FT Weekend and on Radio 4’s Thinking Allowed. The book was described by Pia Sinha, Chief Executive of the Prison Reform Trust as ‘a “must read” for anyone who wants to understand how prisons operate and their impact on people in prison’, and by Kit de Waal as ‘Beautifully written, honest, and clever…a book we should all read’. Prof Nick Hardwick said, ‘it’s not really about prisons or prisoners — it’s a deeply personal memoir about how prisons get under your skin in often uncomfortable ways.’

Yvonne is Writer-in-Residence at HMPs Grendon and Rye Hill, and teaches creative writing retreats with Freedom to Write.