2023-06-01-accounts

The Crito Project Charitable Incorporated Organisation

Report of the trustees for the year ending June 2023

The trustees of the Crito Project charity present an annual report for the year ended 01 June 2023 and confirm they comply with the requirements of the Charities Act 2011, the charity’s constitution, and the Charities SORP (FRS 102).

Our Aims	2
Our Objectives	3
Review of Activity and Achievement	4
Future Plans	5
Structure and Governance	6
Trustees & Volunteers	6
Receipts & Payments Account	7
Statement of Assets & Liabilities	8
Notes to the Accounts	9

1

Our Aims

The Crito Project proceeds from two key beliefs:

• 1) That education is the most cost-effective and successful mode of reform available to our society.

2) That universities have a civic duty to seek out students in unconventional settings, especially those whose lives stand at critical junctures, and who can benefit the most from higher education.

In light of these beliefs, our primary aim is to provide access to higher education to inmates serving their sentence in the east of England.

Second, we advocate for, and work to bring about, the provision of accreditation for those students, in association with strategic partners including the University of East Anglia, the US-based Consortium for the Liberal Arts in Prison, prison governors, education companies working in the sector, and affiliated charities.

Third, we analyse and audit our work whenever possible, in order to add to the collective knowledge and understanding of the impact that such study has upon the wellbeing, life chances, behaviour and decisions of the Charity’s students. We also assess our activity in order to improve the provision of our tutors and the efficacy of our courses.

We confirm that we as the charity’s trustees have complied with our duty to have due regard to the guidance on public benefit published by the commission in exercising our powers.

2

Our Objectives

This year saw the charity move out of “standby” mode and, at long last, back into face-to-face teaching. The previous two years had been marred by Coronavirus lockdowns, which made face-to-face teaching impossible1, and by the slow pace at which our primary partner prison, HMP Wayland, was able to reopen its education department. In July 2022 the charity’s trustees identified HMP Highpoint as our best candidate for a new partnership, due to its well-run regime, its status as a Category-C training prison, and its large population. From a standing start, therefore, our primary objectives for the year became:

• Revisit our curriculum from 2020 & devise a timetable of delivery.

• Run an information campaign onsite at HMP Highpoint, to get the word out about our accredited higher education; this involved posters, flyers, application packs under every cell door, briefing fellow teachers on-site, and creating adverts for “Wayout TV”, the in-cell television service, to broadcast.

• Revisit all procedures and charity policies, to be ready for a fresh round of due diligence with our partners, People Plus.

• Tutor training in workplace safety and safeguarding, as well as securing an insurance policy to cover our delivery: professional indemnity, public & products liability, and employers liability.

• Finalise arrangements with the University of East Anglia for accreditation, and with the Philosophy Department for academic oversight.

• Begin to source and prepare the hundreds of academic books which will make up our dedicated on-site library, named The Russell Bartlett Library , in honour of last year’s generous donor, which enabled these purchases.

• Negotiate and decorate classroom space on site, and match up our workflow with People Plus’ administrative team at HMP Highpoint.

1 Read User Voice’s 2022 “Coping With Covid in Prison”, for an excellent overview of the impact on prisons UK (see https://www.thecritoproject.org/crito-news/2022/8/22/measuring-thepandemic-impact)

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Review of Activity and Achievement

The start of 2023 was an extremely important moment for the charity; we have bounced back from a trying period of lockdown and false-starts, to achieve our principle purpose as a charity: to deliver meaningful higher education in the prison classroom. Understandably, the majority of our work, as well as our limited resources, have been dedicated to making a success of this promising start, and the Board of Trustees is proud to report that the first six months of provision has been a real success. Due to the unfortunate events of the past three years, university-prison partnerships in the UK have declined in occurrence and ambition, and we think the charity is uniquely placed to lead a resurgence in the sector, and ultimately to establish it and its partners as the foremost partnership of its kind in the country. To these ends, we have:

• Enrolled a cohort of ten students on the UK’s only face-to-face accredited higher education prison programme.

• Finalised accreditation with the UEA

• Drafted and found agreement on a new memorandum of Understanding between the Crito Project, the UEA and People Plus, formalising our understanding of each others’ roles and responsibilities.

• Passed the due diligence tests with People Plus, an exhaustive regulatory process which allows us to now bid for contracts in UK prisons.

• Kept our charity website (www.thecritoproject.org) updated with news and opinion pieces.

4

Future Plans

• Our future plans now revolve around our first cohort of ten students at HMP Highpoint; their nominal graduation date will be 10th July 2024, and our first priority is to provide them with the same first-class teaching and support that they would expect to find on UEA campus.

• We plan to liaise with the UEA regarding the possibility of extending the range of our accredited subjects, to broaden our provision, and to meet the criteria for a CertHE (120 credits). We also plan to continue our dialog with Bard College Prison Initiative in the US, whose guidance has been instrumental so far.

• There’s no better teacher than experience, and we plan to modify our provision according to our experiences with the first accredited cohort at HMP Highpoint.

• Once we are established at HMP Highpoint we plan to revisit the potential to start at a second prison in the region, to expand our provision.

• We plan to enter into dialog with other universities regarding their prison outreach programmes, to explore the possibility of working in partnership across the UK.

• We want to work more closely with People Plus, and establish good working practices with them, establishing a system of invoice payment that is regular enough for the charity to be able to pay its free-lance tutors in a timely manner.

• As we become more established, we plan to revisit our arrangement with our tutors; if they are happy to stay with us over a number of terms of teaching, the charity will introduce a PAYE scheme of employment, instead of its current contractor arrangements.

• Once established, we foresee the need to being public relations to some degree, to raise awareness of our good work and its potential for growth, and to create a profile with which to attract donations.

5

Structure and Governance

There has been no change in the charity’s structure or governance in this fiscal year. If our current provision is a success and the charity starts to grow, we will consider seeking additional trustees to fill more specialised roles such as Treasurer and Legal Advisor.

Trustees & Volunteers

Chair

Dr Tom Greaves, Senior Lecturer, UEA Philosophy Department

Trustees

• Georgie Oatley

• Professor Liam Dolan, FRS

• Mollie Holden Oates

Teaching Staff

• Dr Ben Walker, Crito Project Course Director, UEA

• Jack Manzi, Postgraduate Researcher, UEA

Research

Head Researcher

Dr Rob Lock

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Statement of Assets & Liabilities

The charity has no assets or liabilities to declare. Because it has no dedicated offices and no current teaching contracts until teaching can recommence, the charity has no fixed costs. Over the coming few months the charity plans to assemble a small academic library on site, and this will represent the charity’s first real asset.

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Notes to the Accounts

This year the charity has generated little income to date, although we have delivered our first module at HMP Highpoint, January–March 2023, and are awaiting invoice payment from People Plus. The charity’s receipts totalled less than £25,000, and so our receipts and payments accounts have not been independently examined.

The charity remains committed to paying its self-employed tutors a fee commensurate with the UEA’s associate tutor rates (currently £35.45 per hour of classroom teaching). Unfortunately we are not in a position to pay our Course Director, Ben Walker, a wage for his second, voluntary role. As and when we develop a more robust income, we may revisit this arrangement.

The charity made a number of purchases this year, in relation to advertising its work both onsite in prisons and online, and in establishing the necessary academic library onsite at HMP Highpoint.

The year ended with the charity holding a significant percentage of its income in cash reserves. In particular, we foresee a ongoing need for continuing expenditure in establishing a student library capable of supporting higher education learning for our future students.

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