The best-selling author Lee Child has visited HMP Doncaster. He met prisoners on a scheme that aims to raise literacy levels in jails.
Child writes the Jack Reacher novels, with worldwide sales of more than 100 million copies. At Doncaster he met men taking part in the Prisons Literacy Project. An ITV News film crew joined him on his latest visit.
Child believes many people in custody struggle to understand official letters, forms and simple instructions. He said too many people end up in prison for exactly that reason.
“They get a letter about something, they can’t read it, so they ignore it, and it spirals out of control, so they end up inside. That’s so preventable,” he said. He went on to ask why nobody was preventing it.
More than half of adults in UK prisons read and write below the level of an 11-year-old. Child funds the project himself. Participants learn to read and write, and they can even send him novels they have written.
The scheme currently runs in five prisons. With government support, it could reach another 20.
Child has a reported net worth of £52 million. He said he had expected the project to centre on reading, fitting in and coping with the complexities of life. Writing, however, has turned out to play a large part. It gives people a way to express regret, he said, and that really helps.
One man on the project never learned to read or write as a child. He has served several sentences for drug offences and now works as a mentor, helping other prisoners learn to read.
He said he attended school but did not really engage, and left without any qualifications. He described himself as a tearaway in his youth. He later sorted himself out before going off the rails once more.
Of his work as a mentor, he said: “We have some lads here who can’t even do the alphabet. So it’s good to watch them change.”
Dave Anderson, the prison’s deputy director, said: “Within the prison system it’s very difficult to do anything without being able to read.”
He added that Child’s visits had already made a difference. Since the author began coming, more prisoners have signed up for courses and applied for jobs, he said.
HMP & YOI Doncaster is a Category B reception prison for men in Yorkshire and the Humber. At its last full inspection, in December 2025, inspectors judged safety and respect reasonably good. They rated preparation for release as good and purposeful activity as not sufficiently good.
