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Du Rose, Natasha (2026) You're not just a number: experiences of the Key4Life programme at HMP Fosse Way. Project Report. London Metropolitan University, London.
This report examines male prisoners' experiences of the Key4Life rehabilitation programme at His Majesty's Prison Fosse Way. Key4Life is a seven step programme that supports men from custody through to life in the community. Drawing on 46 semi-structured interviews, the report offers an empirically grounded analysis of men's experiences of rehabilitation within the programme. It explores how participants describe personal and cultural change, how they experience emotional development, and how the programme interacts with the wider institutional environment. As the study focused on the in-custody phase, the analysis centres on Steps 1 to 3. By situating participants' narratives within the frameworks of desistance theory and rehabilitative culture, the research contributes to a deeper understanding of what rehabilitation feels like from the inside, and how innovative third sector approaches may enhance both individual and institutional outcomes.
Participants entered the programme having navigated overlapping forms of disadvantage, including poverty, racism, family disruption, school exclusion, and exposure to violence. Key outcomes included improved emotional regulation, trusting relationships with mentors and peers with shared lived experience, increased motivation to engage with employment and training, strengthened family relationships, and a renewed sense of hope. The most significant outcome was the adoption of a prosocial identity defined by care, authenticity, and responsibility, which participants described not as reinvention but as reconnection with a truer, earlier self. These outcomes were underpinned by four enabling psychological mechanisms: a changed mindset, hope for the future, increased confidence, and motivation and purpose.
The research also identifies significant institutional impact. Participants became less confrontational, producing a ripple effect that contributed to a calmer, more emotionally open prison culture, with implications for prison management, staff safety, and the reduction of violence.
The report sets out a series of recommendations for policy and practice. Priority recommendations include commission national expansion of relational rehabilitation programmes across the prison estate, strengthen and scale the existing employer engagement infrastructure, strengthen prison officer training through lived experience expertise, and develop a professionalised framework for lived experience mentoring.
Available under License Creative Commons Attribution 4.0.
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