The [not so] hidden army in UK prisons
I was told once that when people leave the armed forces they have three choices. They either manage the transition well and thrive, they become taxi drivers, or they end up in prison. I have never seen any definitive evidence of this but having spent my formative years as a ‘forces brat’ I found it quite believable.
We’ve all seen the films where the new recruits are broken down and then built up again for the betterment of the squadron. We’ve seen the programmes where bad boys are put through their paces to help turn their lives around. And by and large it works. It works because these individuals are part of a shared experience, coming together to work towards a shared purpose in a structured regime that provides for their needs i.e. accommodation and food, but also provides a level of comradeship that many may not have experienced outside of the barracks.
Our service men and women see things that the average person could not even comprehend. I’ve seen friends parents come back from war zones a fraction of the person they were before they left. I watched parents leave the forces and struggle to adjust to in the civvie world. And many fail.
With so much of their social capital tied to the regiments they served in and the people they served with, there is a substantial job at hand and one that reminds me of the discussions being had around the appeal of gangs and the close knit family they provide for its members.
But knowing that there are around 20,000 of these veterans in the criminal justice system is truly appalling. No matter your view of the forces, many of these people have dedicated large parts of their lives to protecting you and me and those less able to protect themselves.
I have to agree with Dominic Grieve; it is a ‘disgrace that so many who served their country are in jail.’ What is it about civvie society that is failing these veterans, and not providing the support and structure that many come to depend on while in the Army, Navy or RAF?
Getting you onside
Overcrowding, enormous costs, and recidivism continue to dominate, finding a comfortable home in the pages of the press and a standard position on most agendas in the field.
Compounding this is the seeming irreconcilability of it all. For example, the public are presented with the problem (i.e. overcrowding), they’re presented with the governments’ response to it (i.e. building more prisons places), and then they’re presented with practitioners, academics and policy advisors demonstrating the enormous flaws in the plans that will most likely increase the difficulties they were intended to address.
No matter who you choose to agree with, there seems no way out. So what’s the point?
Well the point is that we have a prison service is under tremendous and unsustainable strain. One that is failing to meet the needs of the majority of the individuals within it, prisoners and staff alike, as well as those beyond it, you and me.
Most agree that change has to happen at all different levels but to even begin to make that change happen we need the public on side. They need to be actively engaged in the discussions and decisions as individuals, as communities, as employers, as educators, as mentors, as advisors, as friends and as family.
Prisons need to be opened up so that they can be understood in the same way as we understand other public services; something that we all need to actively engage with in order to get the best, most efficient results. As with schools and hospitals, local partnerships and greater community involvement will provide mechanisms to drive that understanding.
This is a monumental task not least because of the sheer number of different interests and stakeholders, the political capital at stake, and the longevity of the undertaking. But I don’t think it’s unachievable.
Back in March I asked whether we need a Charter for rehabilitation. I continue to see the merit of this approach, facilitating the development of principles by experts, academics, service users, the general public, policy makers, practitioners… everyone. Such a Charter could be a ‘product of genuine collaboration and the administration behind it is a shared resource for all our partners’. Its been achieved in other fields, so why not this one?
Probation in a pickle
The Probation Service gets quite a bit of stick. Whether you think this is fair or not, David Scott’s frank discussion of the difficulties that the ‘beleaguered’ service faces in navigating not only the landscape of public engagement and attitudes, but also the political meddling in budgetary affairs and planning, is disturbing.
Today’s probation service is a radically different institution to the model fashioned by early pioneers to save souls. Its key imperative now seems to be law enforcement with a bit of rehabilitation and treatment thrown in. Probation officers have caseloads that make my knees buckle just at the thought of the sheer numbers. And it is the numbers that seem to count; how many ex-prisoners on the books, how many are in treatment, how many re-offend, etc. Unlike in prisons, there is rarely any discussion of capacity – as Mr Scott clearly points out – and so the caseload numbers continue to rise while at the same time numbers of officers is reducing.
Most probation officers see – face to face – the individuals they are essentially responsible for, for an average of half an hour every one to two weeks.
Quoting a well known fictional column writer… “I can’t help but wonder” about how skewed so much of this seems. The probation service only really has a duty to supervise those people who have served a prison sentence of more than 12 months. Only a small percentage (0.6% was quoted in 2007) of those who are supervised are convicted of another offence. Officers have a difficult job dealing with budget constraints, reducing staff numbers and increasing caseloads. Politics and public attitudes hinder their work and stifle innovation.
To me it seems that the answers are somewhat straight forward and pretty similar to what I have said before in terms of what goes on in prisons. There should be less people in prison. ALL ex-prisoners should be supervised according to their level of need and risk. Communities should have a greater level of involvement in designing and delivering rehabilitation and community action plans (and I don’t mean things like PayBack with fluorescent jackets) and these should begin at the start of a prison sentence. Families, friends and wider social networks need to be developed and engaged at every level. And Politics should take a back seat.
Not in my backyard
Let’s be honest; the idea of a prison holding 1500 individuals who have committed a range of crimes being built in your community is not the most appealing. So when I switched onto the news last night and learnt that Dagenham was on the verge of protest against a proposed new private prison it didn’t come as a shock. And when a journo asks a woman on the street randomly “would you be happy with your kids playing in the garden with a prison next door?” you’re hardly astounded by the response “no way. We don’t want it anywhere near us, it’s not safe” (nb: not verbatim!).
My personal view is that the outrage should be about the fact that these huge prisons are still being planned. We should be reducing the prison population, not providing the space to increase it.
But if they’re going to happen then we need to make the best of it and that means having prisons that not only keep communities safe, but also cater to a range of community needs. I wonder how residents in Dagenham would feel if they knew more about prisons, how they operated and actually visited one. Fran and I were always keen on setting up a ‘Visit a Prison’ scheme but felt it was a little beyond the scope of the PLN – perhaps the relevant government departments (Schools? Community? MoJ? Home Office?) should have a go.
We know that when presented with objective factual information the general public are far less punitive and have fewer objections to the incentive schemes or variety of programmes that operate in prisons. Imagine if more were able to see firsthand how they work rather than rely on the media to provide information which is focussed primarily on the negative and sensational. The news stories about the Dagenham dispute, for example keeps mentioning the possibility of prisoners escaping.
I don’t mean to dismiss this, but come on. Arguably, people in prison are people who just happen to have been caught. Does that make them anymore dangerous than those on the streets, on the bus or tube, in the café round the corner or living down your road who may have also committed a crime – just one they haven’t been caught for?
Go gourmet in gaol
Inside the walls of HMP High Down, gourmet food is being prepared and served.
For the past 12 years, Chef Alberto Crisci has produced 3000 meals each day at the Surrey prison, on a meagre budget of just £1.68 per person, per day. And now, following four years of planning and an investment of over £550,000, he will be responsible for training prisoners to high levels of culinary skill (City & Guilds NVQ 1, NVQ 2, NVQ 3 and A1 Assessor Grade) that will equal any external British college, serving staff, visitors and commercial customers in The Clink, Britain’s first commercial in-prison restaurant.
‘‘THE CLINK can, and will, change the public’s perception to prisoners. I want The Clink to be the sound of chains being broken for men who want, and have worked hard to deserve, a second chance at life.” (Chef Crisci)
I think this is one if the forerunners in innovation around resettlement in the UK at the moment. Not only does the restaurant offer the chance to gain qualifications, develop on the job experience, and gain confidence in interacting with a range of clients; it starts to break down one of the main barriers to an ex-prisoners’ successful resettlement – stigma and prejudice.
More of this please!
The ‘problem’ of governor churn
In its embryonic stages the Prison Learning Network sought to address a very specific ‘problem’ – Governor churn. The idea was that the frequent movement of number one governor’s and senior staff prevented good work from becoming embedded in a particular prison. While the movement did mean that poor performance was prevented from taking root, it was the good stuff that needed to dominate the discussion; highlighting the wealth of innovation and great work that exists in a field too often shrouded with negativity.
Although this question remained part of discussions, wider consultation in the early stages broadened the project developer’s views of the issues or ‘problems’ that the project should seek to address. For me though this question remained extremely relevant. As a result of my work with the PLN a career with the prison service has become increasingly attractive and thanks to the encouragement and support of Roma Hooper I had the opportunity to meet and interrogate a long serving governor about the realities of the role. One of those realities is, unsurprisingly, the fact that churn at the top happens and in a lot of cases, for good reason.
Prisons and their regimes have changed dramatically in the last decade but no-one would disagree that there is still a long way to go. Today the role of the governor seems to be largely focussed on ensuring the culture within their prison is one conducive to rehabilitation. Undoubtedly this will involve making enemies along the way, those working to a different agenda, stuck in their ways and reluctant to engage with a direction a million miles away from the ‘lock them up and throw away the key’ mentality. Changing the culture of an organisation can be exhausting so perhaps it’s understandable that governors move on average every three years.
A change is as good as a rest after all.
Do we need a Charter for Rehabilitation?
What would it do, what would it mean?
As I see it, the Charter might determine and set out common principles between the huge number of stakeholders (governors, practitioners, users, voluntary sector organisations, probation etc), informing the future development of rehabilitative practices, initiatives and projects.
Like education, the criminal justice field is flooded with ideas, interventions, opinions, politicisation, and public misunderstanding and so the issue isn’t really a lack of ideas or opinions. Rather it is, on the one hand, a failure to join up the various stakeholders and developers of innovative practice already in operation and, on the other, the difficulty of mobilising the ’silent majority’ among professionals and the public in favour of a more progressive approach.
Ok, I have borrowed this directly from the Education Charter information itself, but the fit is seamless. The RSA Prison Learning Network is working towards something like this; thinking through how we might bring all these critical partners together to share their knowledge, develop their practices, work collaboratively with each other and in partnership with the prison and probation services, encourage greater understanding amongst the public (and media), build and aggregate useful and meaningful evidence and data and incorportate and embed the ‘user voice’ in every stage of design and delivery.
Mentor Training Day One: Volunteering with offenders
I am going to be a mentor to a prisoner. To say that I’m a little apprehensive would be something of an understatement but I am one day into a three day training course that has already started to dispel at least some of my anxiety.
The training course is run by CLINKS, a national infrastructure organisation supporting the work of voluntary and community organisations that work with offenders and their families. Their Director just happens to sit on the Prison Learning Network Advisory Board so I am fortunate to know their great work and so have every faith they will be able to shape me into the model mentor.
This first day provided an overview of the criminal justice system and the huge pressures that the prison (with over 130,000 people going through the prison system every year) and probation (supervising over 200,000 people on an average day) services are under. It’s easy to see why volunteers are becoming an increasingly important resource across the CJS.
Even after this first introductory day, I feel that I am beginning to understand what a mentor is and does; it’s not about ‘helping’ or ‘enabling’ a person, both of which can be very disempowering, but it’s about supporting a person to enable themselves. It’s about supporting a person to build their own capacity in dealing with the challenges and obstacles that life can throw at them.
Of course, nothing about that is simple especially when the individual you are supporting has most likely been part of a chaotic lifestyle throughout their lives, been caught up in a cycle of offending, and has multiple needs. As a mentor, you might well be the first person who has ever listened to them and offered them objective support enabling them to move away from offending.
Day two tomorrow looks set to be challenging – ‘Handling difficult situations’… Ok, anxiety levels rising again!
Mentor schemes reduce re-offending
As an intervention mentoring works to reduce the likelihood of re-offending while increasing positive life outcomes such as education, training and employment for those individuals who might otherwise become locked in a cycle of offending.
Over the past year I have visited around 14 prisons across the country and in each have heard about or seen some type of mentor scheme taking place ranging from ones focussed on literacy like Toe-by-Toe to others focussed on housing needs like St Giles Trust.
These schemes, often delivered by agencies outside of the Prison Service, provide an essential and sometimes unique service to thousands of individuals across the CJS. They are essential to reducing re-offending – even the Home Office says so but there’s a problem in finding the evidence to prove it.
Thanks to the Ideas Project, I’ve been working with a Senior Officer at HMP High Down to set up a mentor scheme to help prisoners who have received sentences of less than 12 months (The Lighthouse Mentor Scheme). Even though our primary aim is to help the individuals involved we are not naive to the challenge of measuring and demonstrating the effectiveness of the scheme in a way that both recognises the individualism of the intervention and fits within a more standard framework of measurement to be able to prove our case.
There seems to be an appetite for mentoring as an intervention to become far more embedded across the prison service but the case must be proven beyond the anecdote. The challenge is for all schemes to build a standard framework as well as agree an accessible common language. The RSA Prison Learning Network is particularly keen to explore this further and will be developing a kind of ‘call for action’ in its final report due later this year.
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