By Alan Santiago, Chief Product Officer

Last month we shared why correctional education needs human-first AI solutions. In short, correctional leaders and educators are faced with mounting administrative tasks coupled with staff shortages and high turnover. At a moment when human connection—in the form of encouragement, motivation, and guidance—is critical to the successful reentry of the nation’s 2 million incarcerated individuals, correctional staff are navigating overwhelming administrative workloads and endless paperwork.

Countless Possibilities with AI

It doesn’t have to be this way. AI can help reclaim staff time for the work that truly changes lives. 

There are countless ways that AI can become a seamless part of daily administrative tasks—making staff more efficient and more productive. Imagine AI solutions that can:

• Analyze learner progress against individual and facility objectives, surfacing improvement signals and flagging areas that need attention
• Create on-demand, context-aware portfolios that present learner achievements differently for parole boards, employers, or reentry specialists
• Deliver objective, real-time risk and needs assessments with dynamic insights that inform personalized rehabilitation strategies
• Help educators quickly convert their expertise into high-quality digital programming

Those are just a few examples of how AI could turn hours of administrative work into minutes.

Discovering the Solution Together

AI is not a panacea, though, and must be carefully developed and implemented in order to see meaningful outcomes. This is why a partnership approach matters. Rather than simply rolling out technology, effective AI implementation requires a partner who understands that AI tools must be designed specifically for correctional education environments, tuned to correctional language and workflows, and customized for each facility’s unique context.

This is why we developed the Orijin AI Discovery Lab. The AI Discovery Lab is a 3-month consultative engagement to help jurisdictions discover how AI can augment human potential in their correctional education and programming.

Overcoming AI Hurdles: Orijin AI Discovery Lab

Staff training & development

Correctional staff are in two risky camps: some are already experimenting with AI tools, but often with platforms that retain their data and use it to train external models. Others aren’t using AI at all, but feel pressure that they should be. In both cases, staff lack the training and safe environment needed to use AI effectively.

Correctional leaders recognize both the opportunity and the risks. They know AI literacy and workforce training are essential, especially in a field where recruitment is difficult and turnover is costly. But most agencies don’t know how to begin training staff, how to set boundaries, or how to establish a policy that makes AI safe and usable in their environment.

Through the Orijin AI Discovery Lab correctional education teams receive hands-on training on the responsible and effective use of AI (including access to a secure AI tool) and co-create an AI policy tailored to their correctional environment.

Expert guidance & support

Correctional leaders believe the use of AI could add value, but figuring out where and how to start is daunting. Doing it alone requires heavy overhead: researching the market, identifying solutions, vetting vendors, planning implementation, and then proving value. Each of these steps is time-consuming, resource-intensive, and risky—especially when leaders are already stretched thin.

The result is paralysis: they know they need to engage with AI, but the burden of figuring it out makes it feel like an insurmountable task. Without expert guidance, leaders risk either doing nothing or making an expensive misstep.

Structured workshops, extensive user interviews, and direct access to Orijin’s AI experts through the Orijin AI Discovery Lab helps correctional leaders ensure they are focusing everyone’s efforts on the most valuable and productive AI efforts.

Trust & credibility, not hype

The AI market is noisy and confusing. Some vendors make sweeping promises they can’t keep, while others offer solutions that don’t fit the realities of corrections. Leaders are left trying to evaluate tools they don’t fully understand, in a landscape filled with hype, unclear value, and significant risks.

At the same time, cautionary tales are piling up—agencies that rushed into AI and failed, damaging trust with staff, unions, and the public. Correctional leaders are caught in the middle: they need to modernize, but they can’t afford to become the next cautionary tale. In this environment, trust is everything.

The AI Discovery Lab is about drowning out the noise and truly understanding what AI can and cannot do for jurisdictions. At the end of the engagement, jurisdictions will understand how AI can be used to optimize current workflows and have a plan for how AI can be customized to maximize efficiency.

Ready to Explore What’s Possible?

If you’re ready to explore AI, we invite you to join the Orijin AI Discovery Lab and be among the first to experience how human-first AI solutions can help your staff reclaim time for the work that transforms lives.

Sign up today to speak with an expert about joining the AI Discovery Lab