Jobs in sight after jail
VISIONARY business The Prison Opticians Trust is expanding with an online store, after its training courses – teaching inmates to make spectacles and find paid work – have helped cut reoffending rates and rebuild lives.
Just Specs, launched recently by optician and founder Tanjit Dosanjh, whose dad going to prison was the catalyst for the Trust, features an array of designer frames and prescription glasses including a range made by ex-offenders.
The new brand marks another big stride forward for the firm that now has a £1 million turnover and a multifaceted business that includes the training programmes via its charity arm, supported by the company’s eye care services to prisons.
It is now the UK’s biggest and most competitively priced supplier, having made some 50,000 spectacles and carried out 42,000 eye tests. Since starting up in 2012 that tally has saved taxpayers £700,000.
“Rehabilitation is at the heart of our business,” says Dosanjh. “We have taken prison optometry services and standards to a new level, provided the first clinical guidelines and forms for the safe handling of eye care emergencies when no optician is on site, the nearest so far to telemedicine.” Trainees in open prisons are chosen as they approach the end of their sentence and take a 10-week course with day release that covers topics such as anatomy, understanding prescriptions and measurements.
Trust graduates speak of the opportunities giving them the strength to carry on, have a sense of purpose and to reintegrate.
“None of our trainees have gone back to prison,” adds Dosanjh. “But I never forget that society has more deserving causes than people who have broken the rules. So being financially independent is important and made us innovative.”
The problem it is tackling is huge. Reoffending costs £15billion a year and half of prisoners are unskilled. However with 20 full-time or locum optometrists on its books, the Trust’s training so far has led to 40 current and former inmates finding jobs and careers.
It has taken much breaking down of barriers posed both by initially riskaverse employers and unreceptive authorities tied into complex contracting systems, says Dosanjh. He was spurred on by the lack of vocational training he saw when on family prison visits.
Persevering with a self-funded optical training pilot in prison that led in 2015 to £172,000 of charity funding from the Sainsbury Family and the Paul Hamlyn Foundation, then key optometry contracts from Care UK.
Today the Trust has a lab in Maidstone, Kent and is developing plans that include a distance learning qualification for closed prisons, an optical lab inside an open one and expanding the retail customer side through Just Specs.
“Had my father not gone to prison I would never have thought of this,” says Dosanjh. “Now my motivation is to create contributors to society.”