Digital maturity and digital rehabilitation in prisons: organizational conditions for inclusion and reintegration

In an era of compulsory computing, incarceration produces acute forms of digital exclusion, limiting access to the technologies and skills increasingly required for participation in contemporary society. Digital rehabilitation has emerged as a response to this challenge by integrating digital access, skills development, and digital participation into correctional practice. However, the successful implementation of digital rehabilitation depends on both technology provision and broader organizational conditions. Drawing on Reisdorf and Rikard's (2018) Digital Rehabilitation Model and Knight et al.'s (2023) Digital Maturity framework, this paper examines how digital rehabilitation is implemented in highly digitally mature correctional systems and identifies the conditions that enable its development and sustainability. Using qualitative case studies from Southeast Asia, Western/Northern Europe, and Oceania, we analyze explicit digital rehabilitation interventions alongside the structural conditions that support them. Findings indicate that digital rehabilitation is most effective when supported by strategic leadership and governance, organizational capacity, collaborative partnerships and participation, and learning, evaluation, and adaptation. Although the three jurisdictions followed different pathways to digital transformation, all demonstrated strong alignment between rehabilitation goals and broader digital strategies. The findings also suggest that digitally mature prison systems are shaped by wider political and institutional environments, including national digital priorities, cross-sector coordination, and institutional capacity. We argue that digital maturity should be understood as an institutional capability that enables digital rehabilitation to become embedded within correctional practice. Where these conditions are present, digital rehabilitation has the potential to support digital inclusion, capability-building, reintegration, and broader public value outcomes.