Fine Cell Work is a charity and social enterprise with a proven record of reducing reoffending rates, producing beautiful products handmade in prison, and equipping prisoners post release with the skills to aid their reintegration into society. The prisoners’ high-quality, handmade products are sold to the public and designers, artists and heritage organisations commissioning bespoke artworks, with ever-growing demand. The prisoners gain about a third of proceeds from sales and are encouraged to save for their families and themselves after release; the public gain a beautiful and memorable product which shows there is hope in our prisons.
With a staff of 15, supported by approximately 350 volunteers yearly, the charity now has annual revenues of over £1 million. Fine Cell Work is the only British charity providing social enterprise and earned income for prisoners on such a wide scale and has created the largest workforce of hand-embroiderers in Europe. The charity’s model is sustainable, with a third of its income derived from sales of prisoners’ work, and it has increased the number of prisoners worked with every year since its inception 24 years ago – up until the 2020 pandemic.
In 2017, Fine Cell Work opened a textiles workshop in London providing employment support to ex-prisoners, and this has been extremely successful, with only a 4% reoffending rate (against a national average of 46%), and with 40% of participants going into work (against a national average of 17%). This extension of the charity's work has enabled it to grow by a third and to professionalise and stabilise its social enterprise, increasing sales of prison-made products by 60% over 2016-19 and increasing the number of prisoners worked with by 60% in the same period.
The goal of the charity now is to extend the range of opportunities for paid, creative work in its prisons so that all prisoners on its scheme can lead fulfilling and crime-free lives after serving their prison sentence. In the four years thereafter, Fine Cell Work’s ambition is to build on its prison and post-release programmes. The Charity plans to increase opportunities for rehabilitation by having more of a presence within the prison system to provide more of an impact on prisoners both in prison and post-release.
Fine Cell Work plans to do this by:
- Establishing five production hubs centred around partnerships with textile workshops in prisons upskilling the prison-trained workforce
- In the prisons, establish additional groups teaching hand-stitching in cell groups
- Continuing to provide increasing quantities of varied, skilled textile products adding new designs and product ranges
- Expanding post-release support nationally
- Establishing a graduate support scheme for those who have completed our post-release programme