Social Innovation within Prison Service

This paper report on a project in a maximum-security prison in Denmark, where a group of officers and inmates engaged in a participatory design project aimed at improving the quality of everyday life. A series of participatory design workshops had two overall objectives: 1) to increase levels of trust and confidence in the prison, and 2) to learn how to engage inmates better in their everyday life inside prison, e.g. through engaging them in collective matters. The process of co-inquiry and co-creation provided a new social infrastructure, which allowed inmates and prison officers to access new roles and social positions.