E-Scrap Recycling Helping Reform Prisoners

Across the world today, prisons and prison reforms are a hot topic. Everyone wants to be able to help those who have been shuffled into the system, but it seems like there is no really good way to ensure that prisoners have the skills necessary to change their lives, advance, and provide a meaningful contribution to the world before their sentences are complete.

HMP Dovegate

HMP Dovegate is a privately-run prison in Staffordshire, England. Recycling Lives, an e-scrap business, has partnered with HMP Dovegate to help low-level offenders gain a skill they can use after they complete their sentence. Around 40 inmates, both men and women, work with Recycling Lives in Staffordshire to help dismantle electronic devices. They separate things like circuit boards, wiring, plastics and glass so that the items can be correctly recycled or reused in other products.

The best news is that between 2015-2017, 75 of the inmates who were part of the program were released and, happily, only two of those 75 inmates reoffended. This means that the program is working. Even better, over 200 inmates throughout the UK are able to benefit from the partnership with e-recycling centers. They process more than 133,000 televisions a year. This is 133,000 televisions that are properly dismantled and recycled. So why aren’t prisons in the United States employing this method if it’s been proven to be so beneficial?

There are some United States federal prisons that do process scrap electronics, but the program has been scaled back in the past few years. Hopefully, US prisons will be able to see what good the e-recycling program has done the UK inmates and are able to utilize the same system to see similar results.