A Better
Justice System,
Built from the
Inside, Out
What We Do
EMPOWER trainees to obtain high wage careers & become change agents upon release
EMPLOY incarcerated people building technology to improve the justice system
Train incarcerated people in tech skills
TRANSFORM the system to better serve all incarcerated people
“The people closest to the problem are closest to the solution”-JustLeadership USA
Our Story
Jessica Hicklin and Chris Santillan, spent 26 and 28 years incarcerated respectively, both originally sentenced to life without parole as juveniles. Desperate to improve their minds and opportunities for successful return to society, in a facility with no access to formal education, they taught themselves how to code, without the internet. Teaming up with outside partners, they went on to use these skills to develop UnlockED, a learning management system to make digital educational content more accessible for themselves and their incarcerated peers.
Since then, Unlocked Labs has evolved to empower others to walk in Jessica & Chris’s footsteps, building the skills needed to succeed in the world, while building solutions to solve the problems they live every day.
Our Technology
UnlockEd (the solution) is the first prison education platform created by incarcerated students for incarcerated students
Education Access Tools
We build hardware and software tools to make it easy to deploy a wide range of education and rehabilitation programs in-person, remotely, or in a hybrid matter.
Partners
