Prison rehabilitation is changing lives in the UK, improving people’s futures and helping prisoners get on the ladder of opportunity and reduce instances of reoffending. Nava Ramanan, Deputy Director for Digital Infrastructure and Security Operations at the UK Ministry of Justice, tells us how the organisation’s Launchpad programme means prisoners can use their devices for administrative tasks that simplify day-to-day life and streamline formerly slow and inefficient processes, and access important daily information from their cells to gain self-confidence and improve behaviour.
The UK Ministry of Justice (MoJ) relies on a secure, cloud-managed network from Juniper to deliver great Wi-Fi experience at its prisons and probation offices to support work, education and human connection.
Reducing reoffending is at the heart of the Ministry’s Launchpad rehabilitation programme. Prisoners are issued laptops to connect to the network, select their meals, or obtain other approved services right from their cells. A great Wi-Fi experience is integral to the programme’s success.
“We wanted to deliver efficient network user experiences to our staff and prisoners,” said Nava Ramanan, Deputy Director for Digital Infrastructure and Security Operations, Ministry of Justice. “We want to know about slow connections and poor performance before our users do.”
Workers are free to roam with automated, cloud-based Wi-Fi
The organisation wanted to provide fit-for-purpose connectivity and a secure network solution for its probation sites that leveraged a cloud-native, AI-driven microservices architecture. Juniper’s full stack wired and wireless solution hit all the requirements; delivering network visibility, automated troubleshooting and an exceptional user experience.
Not all the remote probation offices today have Wi-fi enabled services or public Wi-fi access to visitors. However, more than 400 probation sites and prisons in the UK use Juniper Mist solutions and currently implementing 100+ probation sites with Wi-fi capabilities. Those probation sites use Juniper access points and switches that work with the Juniper Mist cloud architecture, driven by Mist AI to deliver fast, reliable and continuously optimised connectivity to probation officers and other staff. Juniper Networks SRX firewalls provide secure connectivity from probation offices to the enterprise network and cloud services.
For the IT staff, network configuration, management and security duties are streamlined with AIOps. Juniper Mist Wi-Fi Assurance, Wired Assurance and Marvis Virtual Network Assistance work together to proactively solve wireless and wired network issues before they impact the user experience.
Prisoners do not have free and unfettered access to the Internet from any device. For instance, the IT team can use the Juniper Mist dashboard to quickly identify if there’s an unapproved Wi-Fi device connected in the prison. “Juniper Mist gives us very effective alerts if unapproved hotspots or rogue devices try to connect to the network,” said Ramanan.
A solution for successful prisoner reform
Prisoners connect to the network for various purposes, with an opportunity to improve their digital skills and to reduce their likelihood of reoffending.
“We’re delivering more secure, faster, better network services,” said Ramanan. “Prison staff, probation officers and prisoners have embraced Wi-Fi and given us positive feedback.”
Proactive, automated Wi-Fi is a huge advantage to allow a central IT team to solve problems before they impact users in prisons or probation offices. “We can predict potential issues before they happen,” said Ramanan. “Mist AI automatically detects issues and proactively self-heals or sends an alert to an engineer, so they exactly know where there is an issue in the network and what to fix.
Mist AI-driven tools like Marvis can step in and help solve problems. “If there’s a bad cable or port flapping, we can fix it before it hurts the user experience,” he said.
Looking ahead, the Ministry of Justice expects to gain even more value from the Juniper network. “We are delivering great user experiences and there is so much more possible with the intelligence in Juniper Mist,” said Ramanan.
Nava Ramanan, Deputy Director for Digital Infrastructure and Security Operations at the UK Ministry of Justice, discusses the project in more detail.
Can you tell us what your role entails?
I am responsible for overseeing the Digital Infrastructure and Security Operations at the Ministry of Justice. My team is responsible for multiple IT-related services and technologies, including network, voice, video, hybrid cloud and digital security operations across the entire MoJ ecosystem.
This encompasses its headquarters, prisons, courts, probation facilities and other related agencies that in total comprise more than 1,100 sites. Our responsibilities extend to providing digital services to our entire staff (approximately 94,000 employees) and to provide selected digital services that are accessible to prisoners. To carry out these duties effectively, my team is organised into 22 product teams which consist of 220 members in total. This structure allows us to manage day-to-day operations efficiently. I also sit on two cross-government councils representing the organisation.
What was the driving force behind needing to modernise your wired and wireless digital infrastructure and why did you turn to Juniper Networks for the answer?
The MoJ is a large and complex organisation which has a strong reliance on digital communications. When we introduced the Justice Digital Strategy, the vision was to change the user experience of services provided by the MoJ. We set out to make them simpler, faster and better for everyone. Within my team, we’ve crafted a network strategy and technology roadmap to achieve our objectives for both our internal staff and the public. This method not only supports managing technical issues but also enables better interoperability, fortifies security measures, mitigates risk and provides a comprehensive insight into the health of our overall digital systems.
The main objectives of the network strategy are to provide reliable network services that form a stable foundation for operational success, evaluate and streamline network systems to make technology easier to build, deliver, support and facilitate the integration of domains across the entire MoJ organisation. We prioritise fundamental principles like Cloud First, Secure-by-Design, Wi-Fi First, Internet First and the integration of a Zero Trust security model.
Given the extensive scope of our infrastructure, we have a diverse vendor ecosystem providing various network and security capabilities. Our journey towards implementing a cloud-based Wi-Fi solution commenced with Juniper Mist AI. We began working with Juniper Networks as a part of managed service initiatives to implement wireless connectivity in prisons and probation facilities across the UK. We have successfully implemented Juniper Wi-Fi in over 15 prisons and the implementation continues to grow. Additionally, Juniper switching solutions have been integrated with wireless technology in over 400 of our probation sites.
How do your staff and prisoners benefit from wired and wireless experiences?
1. Learning and self-development
Enhancing digital literacy for learning and personal development stands out as a clear win for both wired and wireless facilities. By offering digital platforms in prisons — be it individual, personal laptops wired or wireless in cells or educational spaces — inmates gain access to modern technology services, enabling them to retrain and acquire new skills that can be applied upon their release, fostering a more positive future for them. This strategy not only encourages financial responsibility but also creates opportunities for employment post-release. Notably, this initiative is very effective and sees a high participation rate.
2. Rehabilitation and well-being
Enabling a regulated network capability permits prisoners to engage with wellness content as well as pertinent information and activities. This content is filtered and empowers them to manage their own time through controlled and self-service elements. Broadened access to digital services throughout the prison correlates with heightened feelings of well-being among the prisoner community. Inmates note increased confidence in using technology, potentially boosting their digital literacy and enhancing their employment prospects post-release. This expanded access also improves avenues for communicating with family and friends, thereby fostering and maintaining better relationships outside of the prison ahead of eventual release.
3. Prison performance and staff satisfaction
The provision of wired and Wi-Fi services has improved prison performance and efficiencies, making the prison service a modern place to work. Our state-of-the-art network provides a foundation to implement other digital services, systems and automation. As a result, it is possible to remove unnecessary administrative activities and increase time efficiencies spent in other areas of the prison, as well as minimising or removing excess paperwork. One particular benefit of streamlining paperwork and administration is that there is more time for meaningful, positive interactions between prisoners and staff, ultimately leading to increased staff satisfaction.
4. Improved trust and reduced friction within a prison
Equipping prisons with both wired and wireless capabilities fosters enhanced flexibility and adaptability for both prison officers and inmates. This facilitates improved communication channels, complete with comprehensive audit trails, in turn nurturing trust and transparency in interactions between prisoners and officers, thereby reducing overall tensions within the prison environment. A more robust audit trail not only ensures transparency but also cultivates a perception of fairness.
The primary benefit for the probation estate lies in enabling Wi-Fi across the sites, allowing staff the freedom to move seamlessly within the building, including meeting and interview rooms, with constant access to their devices.
As a government body, how important is protecting and modernising your infrastructure and how did you work with Juniper to achieve this?
Data protection is crucial for safeguarding sensitive information, adhering to regulations and upholding public trust.
Looking through the lenses of efficiency and productivity, we aim to automate as much as we can, improve scalability and enhance performance. This helps us to reduce the number of incidents raised and simplify the Wi-Fi estate which facilitates ease of management for our technical and service teams.
User experience is at the centre of everything we do. We want to make sure we understand our estate and know of any network issues before our users do. This is where Juniper has helped us to acquire actionable insights in real time, delivering meaningful outputs from data, rather than gigabytes of logs that take engineers hours to analyse. The self-driving elements of the network, visibility and Artificial Intelligence Operations (AIOps) are key benefits of Juniper technology. The by-products of these have been scalability and ease of deployment.
What would the prison system/experience look like without this technology in place?
Prison officers would have to revert to spending lots of time on administration using paper-based processes, losing valuable time to spend focusing on areas such as prisoner rehabilitation. On the other hand, they would not be able to take responsibility for the organisation of key aspects of their own lives and would not have the same level of access to key services.
At probation sites, staff might face challenges accessing their systems, leading to decreased efficiency. We also provide public Wi-Fi access which enables the public visiting probation sites to have Internet access which they can use to access well-being and rehabilitation-related information.
Were there any pain points during the implementation phase and alternatively, what success factors were there that were potentially unexpected?
The challenge for us is always the timeframes and logistics of installing Access Points (APs) in prisons, especially within cellblocks. Victorian buildings are often not conducive to wireless signal strength.
Key to our success is the access we’ve had to a wealth of information from day one. This has enabled us to predict user experience issues accurately and identify issues such as faulty cables before users report incidents.
What does the future hold for the prison system and its technological capabilities and how will you continue with digitisation initiatives such as these?
For me, the key is to continue to scale out the programmes that have proven to be successful, such as our ‘Launchpad’ initiative which enables in-cell technology and to use technology to drive efficiency and solve operational and user problems. In short, we want to continue to make our services simpler, faster and better for everyone.
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