The Prison Opticians Company set up to provide prisoners with better opticians services, eye tests and spectacles, and train prisoners in spectacle making.
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More Than Just Specs
We provide optical training and meaningful employment to prisoners and ex-offenders, giving them a second chance and helping to reduce re-offending.
Discover our history
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2009
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2011
We raised the proposal to train people in optics in English prisons with the Ministry of Justice.
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2012
The company funded the set up of a optical training lab in prison and this project became known as Liberty Glasses after Tupac Shakur's poem, Lady Liberty Needs Glasses.
This training lab showed us there was an appetite amongst prisoners to learn more technical skills whilst in prison.
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2013
The Company's pilot project was noticed by the Sainsbury Family Charitable Trust and they made a grant of £100,000.
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2014
The Paul Hamlyn Foundation awarded a grant of £72,000.
Care UK awarded contracts to provide the optometry services into 3 London prisons.
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2015
A charity was registered and a training centre was set up in Earl Street, Maidstone. From here we began training prisoners who were coming to the end of their sentence and were eligible for day release.
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2019
In our first 3 years of training full time we had worked with 65 prisoners and helped 42 of them get jobs in optics and 27 of them carried on working in optics post release.
Training for prisoners is FREE to the taxpayer because we use the profits from our prison optometry contracts to fund it.
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2020
Supplied eye testing equipment to Light Without Borders and Spectacles for refugees in Lesvos refugee camp.
JustSpecs.co.uk is owned by the prison opticians company and all profits go to training or employing more ex-offenders.
About Just Specs
Just Specs offers the people of Britain great value for money on prescription spectacles. We offer prescription spectacles at a very low price point. We are quick and efficient so most prescriptions can be turned around in 5 days.
The orders placed on this website will help us to offer more paid employment to people who want a 2nd chance in life.
We hope you will join and help us create more jobs for people leaving prison and wanting to join the optics industry.