Tech Rebooted for Former Prisoners

Refur­bished, recycled and noth­ing less than life-chan­ging, the obsol­ete laptops from busi­nesses being trans­formed by Rebooted mean prison leav­ers and pris­on­ers’ chil­dren can keep learn­ing and trans­form their pro­spects too. “By help­ing strug­gling fam­il­ies access edu­ca­tion, stay con­nec­ted and develop skills, we’re break­ing the end­less cycle of reoffend­ing which does so much harm,” explains James Tweed who foun­ded char­ity Rebooted a year ago. Its fund­ing part­ner is Cor­acle Online, Tweed’s plat­form for laptops used in pris­ons.

Some 200,000 young people who have an incar­cer­ated par­ent are poten­tial cus­tom­ers and Rebooted has a wait­ing list in the hun­dreds. “We def­in­itely need more equip­ment and there’s no limit to what we can take,” says Tweed.

Now an excel­lent oppor­tun­ity has opened up fol­low­ing a move by Microsoft, which has ended sup­port for its Win­dows 10 oper­at­ing sys­tem. Impacted firms, such as those in the pro­fes­sional ser­vices sec­tor, are upgrad­ing their tech­no­logy to main­tain secur­ity.

“There could be up to 240 mil­lion devices at risk of threats and pos­sibly head­ing to land­fill, but we can con­vert them and have a mar­ket,” Tweed says.

Cur­rently its tar­get is 2,000 laptops which each cost £25 to refit. Its oper­a­tion with a core team of five is lean and simple, with busi­nesses across the UK invited to get in touch about arran­ging free col­lec­tion or drop off.

Rebooted then cleans the devices and installs Google ChromeOS Flex. By man­aging the sys­tems, Rebooted ensures they are safe and fam­il­ies can learn together.

“Other char­it­ies refer strug­gling fam­il­ies, and prison leav­ers com­plete an applic­a­tion while inside via Cor­acle. Rebooted will liaise with pro­ba­tion to ensure it’s OK for an ex-offender to have a laptop,” says Tweed.

Inspir­ing examples of what can be achieved are already fil­ter­ing through with a prison leaver who star­ted work­ing on a degree inside hav­ing recently gradu­ated. Obsol­ete equip­ment that lead­ing law firm Birketts LLP sent was cleaned and is now used by dis­ad­vant­aged school chil­dren while a simple guide to using tech­no­logy has been pro­duced by another former inmate.

Part­ner­ships, such as those with edu­ca­tion spe­cial­ist Getech, which ensures equip­ment is securely wiped, and Google, are cent­ral to Rebooted’s pro­gress. “Dona­tions – always wel­come – enable us to man­age logist­ics, secure pro­cessing, con­tent licens­ing and dis­tri­bu­tions,” adds Tweed.

Plans for 2026 include scal­ing the device dis­tri­bu­tion pro­gramme and secur­ing fund­ing to license qual­ity edu­ca­tional con­tent such as IT refresher courses, to “build a com­munity of cham­pi­ons,” explains Tweed.

“Rebooted’s pro­cess is much more than hand-me-downs, it’s a win-win. Digital lit­er­acy is an essen­tial part of life today and we must ensure every­one has the skills and access. Our mes­sage to com­pan­ies is: don’t lan­guish, donate.” ● rebooted.me