Congratulations to Prison Veenhuizen in the Netherlands for winning the first Prison Achievement Award in 2022 for their concept "Innovation lab" - a unique collaboration between the prison in Veenhuizen and the Hanze University Groningen.
In 2018, researchers from Hanze University and prison staff built a so-called “innovation lab” together with managers from prison Veenhuizen and managers from Hanze University. This innovation lab is part of the prison, a place for research and experience to interact, a place where students, prison staff, prisoners, and researchers meet. Through this co-creation, prison Veenhuizen implements a new way of family approach, but through this collaboration, prison Veenhuizen is culturally able to further innovate in other ways.
The initiative for which the penitentiary institution and university of applied sciences are awarded is the Innovation Lab on the Family Approach in prison Veenhuizen. This innovation lab has been operating since 2018 and from this location, about 140 students from various disciplines of Hanze University of Applied Sciences have contributed to the further development of the family approach in the recent years. For example, the students conduct practice-oriented research and, together with prison staff, develop all kinds of projects and products that can be used to improve the contact between a child and its detained father.
