ABSTRACT
This chapter considers what is going on in criminal justice system, and how prevalent low literacy and dyslexia are in prisons and young offenders’ institutions. It examines the links between dyslexia and criminality and the social and economic returns for providing appropriate, supportive, well-mentored environments where offenders can engage actively with literacy programmes, tailored to meet their particular needs. Schools tend to group low achieving students together, whether they have higher intelligence or not. They see low achievement and label accordingly. There is an enormous amount of evidence from research that suggests that there is a disproportionate incidence of dyslexia among prison populations, not only in the UK but across the world. These research studies show that between 30–50% of those in the criminal justice system in the UK are probably dyslexic.
