The Lockup

I don’t really like my telly. The volume buttons on the TV itself don’t work which is ok because the remote works fine, but there’s never anything on. There aren’t any fishing programmes around at the moment and it’s even difficult to watch the mighty Arsenal defeat Barcelona because during the build-up, half time and the post match analysis I am told I need to buy a car, or a new razor, or some life enriching, soul satisfying, character enhancing, caffeine infused eye roll-on for men that will apparently transform me into a chisel-jawed, bestubbled, hunk of a man who is the envy of my peers and the thing of desire for leggy women the world over.  Maybe I have misread that advert!

I did watch a programme the other day called ‘the lockup’ on BBC3 and it really made me think. The programme is a documentary shot in a Humberside custody suite and charts the exploits of the visitors and staff. I didn’t catch the whole programme but the part I did see documented two stories in parallel. On the one hand we had an 11 year old boy who had been arrested (I’m not sure what for) and was in custody for the better part of two days. The custody sergeant had been unable to contact his father to collect him. On the other hand we had an 18 year old man who had been arrested fleeing from a burglary with two of his mates. The burglary was of an elderly woman and was caught on a street CCTV camera. To make matters worse, one of the three men used to walk the elderly woman’s dog so they knew her.

The staff had an amount of sympathy for the 11 year old and talked a lot about doing what they could to ensure he didn’t get a criminal record and I as a viewer shared this empathy for the lad. The same cannot be said for the 18 year old man who had no sympathy from either the staff or from me. One of the officers told the camera that he didn’t like burglars at the best of times but he especially disliked those who burgled the elderly. A sentiment most of us would share.

It occurred to me right then as I was feeling two conflicting emotions at once: sympathy for the 11 year old and anger and resentment for the 18 year old, that for all intents and purposes, these two lads were one in the same person. If the 11 year old lad is not handled properly and if social services, the courts, the family and the community don’t handle their part in the next few years of his life effectively, he might just turn up as an 18 year old burglar and we will duly despise him.

Where is the line in our lives where we stop being products of our upbringing and surroundings and become truly responsible?  And if our upbringing has been such that crime is felt to be an acceptable way of life, does that line even exist? These are questions I for one cannot answer and I would be surprised if anyone could do more than merely speculate. They are questions that help form the basis for my involvement in prison work.

My greatest hope is that some day there will be enough people who care about influencing peoples circumstances as to actually make a real difference on a large scale in our society. Until then Prison Fellowship will continue to influence small changes in individual lives. Here are some of the reasons I love what I do:

Writing about our Angel Tree programme, a Prisoner from HMP Wormwood Scrubs says;  

“Dear Angel Tree, I want to thank you for the presents sent on my behalf to my children this Christmas. It is a time of year I am struggling to cope with without being with my family and I must admit that it hurts a great deal. I want you to know that I really appreciate what you have done for my family and especially for me. I love my children very very much and this will be the first Christmas I have been apart from them.”

Talking about Sycamore Tree, a prisoner from HMP Bronzefield writes;

“It has made me think about how I made life unbearable for the victims. In future there’ll be no more committing of crime, I intend to have a bright future.”

You do realise that I am still itching to tell you all about my carp fishing exploits. If I can figure out how to get photos onto this blog you’ll be in for a real treat...

So how do you know that an offender means it when they say sorry?

This is a question I have been asked quite a bit when I tell people about the final session of the Sycamore Tree programme. It is not an easy question to answer when you are talking to someone who has never visited a prison and has grown up with a media-fed, cynical and unqualified view of prison life. I will attempt to answer it for you here and I’m sure you will tell me if I have made a hash of it.

The final session is where we see the first application of the principles of Restorative Justice from the offenders taking the programme. We have spent five previous sessions teaching them what Restorative Justice is, how to accept responsibility for what they have done, what it feels like to be a victim, how to take the first steps towards reconciliation and getting them to talk about what they can do to change.

Now they have to demonstrate what they have learnt by performing what we call a ‘Symbolic Act of Restitution.’ Essentially they are encouraged to stand in front of a room full of people, mostly total strangers, and read a letter or a poem or present an artwork or whatever they have prepared. The room full of strangers will include a selection of community witnesses, the victims who attended earlier in the course to share their story, often a Governor or other senior staff member and, of course, the other learners.

If you are an unqualified, media-fed cynic as I once was, you won’t be impressed yet. So please listen whilst I tell you one of my experiences at a final session.

I attended a session in a well known, inner city prison full of local, inner city, young men with all the airs and graces of inner city life, drugs, violence and gang culture. These things don’t cease upon sentencing – if anything they can sometimes be more intense on a prison wing than on the street. Status can be everything on the wing and a new pair of trainers will do wonders for you on the respect scale.

To see a young man in an environment like this full of masculine front stand up to read a letter he has written to the parents of another young man he had beaten up in a gang related incident. To see this man physically shaking and weeping in front of the room I have described. To see some of the other men welling up at what they are hearing. To hear the regret that the realisation of their actions has induced: a realisation not at all prompted by the court process. To witness all this is the only way to have that big question answered. This is what I witnessed and I have absolutely no doubt as to their sincerity.

Last week we saw 9 Sycamore Tree courses come to a close. Nearly 200 men will have demonstrated their desire to change in this way. Such was the sincerity demonstrated in one prison that a woman who has suffered the murder of a loved one and had attended the course to share her story, stood up in front of the same total strangers and expressed her desire to forgive the murderers!

Say what you like, this is real and it’s happening all around the country.

The best way to reduce the ridiculous reoffending rates we have in this country is to never release anyone, ever, for any reason.

The only way I know in reality is to put a victim in front of an offender to explain to them what they are actually doing. Ask a drug dealer if he has victims and see what he says. Put him in a room with the parents of a young man murdered for no reason by strangers who were off their faces on the same drugs that your man is dealing. Now see what he says. The court process will tell him that he has done wrong but won’t teach him what those affected by his actions are going through. Only when this happens will you see real change. He knew dealing drugs was against the law before he did it so what is the point of merely telling him what he already knows and clearly isn’t bothered by?

RJ is the only way! (this would be a good song to the tune of Go West by the Petshop Boys).

So far I have taken you on a three week journey through my life at Prison Fellowship and also of my mind, and I haven’t even mentioned my love of carp angling….

Happy Valentine's Day

Happy Valentine’s Day! If you go in for that type of expensive commercial gesture. I do not, anymore than I spend any money on ‘national read in the bath day’ which happened to be last Wednesday. It’s not that I’m not romantic, it’s just that my eldest daughter’s birthday is a few days after valentine’s and my wife’s Is a week later. Mine is a week after that so we don’t spend anything on Valentine’s in the increasingly unrealistic hope that we might have any resources left to celebrate my birthday.

In the spirit of inclusion however, I shall keep love and family as the themes for this week as we discuss Angel Tree.

It is estimated that there are 160,000 children a year with a parent in prison. This is two and a half times the number of children in care and six times the number on the Child Protection Register. The fact that this figure is estimated is key in my mind. The simple fact is that nobody really knows exactly how many there are and this is because as a society, we don’t really care. It’s not our responsibility to care. It’s the criminal’s fault. Whether you believe that or not you must admit that it certainly isn’t the children’s fault.

This is what Angel Tree is really about. The simple aim of Angel Tree is to provide a Christmas gift for the children of prisoners. I have been very surprised at the reaction of some people I have spoken to about this scheme. Quite often they tell me that it is the prisoner’s responsibility to look after their family, why should we help them?

This view seems to be symptomatic of a wider perception that, in my opinion, needs to change. I have generally found it to be the attitude in this country that family contact, visits, phone calls etc are a perk or treat that the prisoner may or may not deserve. We need to get away from this skewed view of the world and realise that they are in fact the RIGHT of the family.

We have a duty in a reasonable civilization to make people who break the law accountable for their actions. This often means prison. We have little right however to punish their families, yet this is exactly what we do. We continually imprison men and women in this country many miles from where they live making family contact difficult. Families are the forgotten victims of crime.  A government study in 2007 stated that:

‘the children of offenders are an invisible group, there is no shared, robust information on who they are, little awareness of their needs and no systematic support.’

Though there is research to suggest that family ties can reduce reoffending by up to 39%, and in spite of the fact that the prison population has grown, the number of prison visits has fallen. What are we doing to help? Well, when we don’t even know how many families there are with a loved one inside, you tell me…

I can tell you what we at Prison Fellowship are doing to help and that is Angel Tree. We send Christmas gifts to over 4,000 children a year. In an effort to help even more families, we are running a pilot scheme whereby Young Offenders will have an opportunity to send a small gift to their mother for Mother’s Day. We have over 10,000 young people (18-20) currently in prison and over 2,000 children (under 18). We have only four specialist juvenile prisons and only about a dozen prisons with juvenile residential units.

Scatter this number evenly across England and Wales and you will have some idea how far the parents of imprisoned young people have to travel to visit their children.

After a week which involved much media and political debate about the rights of prisoners and their place in our society, we will continue to work towards the rights of some of the forgotten people society has failed.

I hope that has given you something to think about. Now I’m off to consider all the things I wish we could afford for my birthday...

Dave's first blog

Welcome to my new blog. For those who don’t know me, which will probably be all of you, I am the Programmes Administrator for Prison Fellowship. Though this sounds like a flashy, technical computer term, it basically means that I oversee the administration of our Sycamore Tree programme, as well as coordinating Angel Tree.  I know about as much about computers as I do about drilling for oil.

Each week I will be posting a short, hopefully interesting, blog detailing what’s going on in the world of Prison Fellowship programmes. My aim is to educate and amuse and I hope I can give you something to think about while you wait eagerly for my next post.

I have been working for Prison Fellowship for two years now and I must say that I have been challenged in many ways during this time. My background is entirely unrelated to prison ministry and the journey God is taking me on is as exciting as it is challenging. I look forward to sharing some of this journey with you.

So! What’s happening now? Well…

We are currently running 17 Sycamore Tree courses around the country, 4 of which come to an end this week. Those 4 being HMPs Swansea, Coldingley, Wymott and Lewes. These final sessions are always exciting and will be an opportunity for the learners to demonstrate their desire to change in front of a room full of wing-mates, prison staff, community representatives and victims.

A young prisoner at HMP Feltham recently wrote:

‘The programme has made me think about my victims. It made me realise how much my crime affects them. It also showed me that I am not only hurting the victim but everyone around me.’

It is always amazing to see the change in attitudes during the course and these final sessions will be emotional and rewarding. Read through the pages of our website to learn more about Sycamore Tree.

I am collecting feedback from last Christmas’ Angel Tree. So far it looks as if we are on track to have sent more gifts than we did in 2009. I am also busy arranging a pilot for a new Angel Tree programme for Mother’s Day. More on this next week…

We produced a family feedback form in 2010 to send to the parent/carer of the child receiving a gift so we could find out how the children feel about Angel Tree. I have received over 100. Here is a sample of what they say:

‘From the bottom of my heart I would like to say thank you. To see a child's face light up like my son's did was wonderful for me on Christmas morning. Thank you Angel Tree.’     

If you are short of a prayer point or two, we are recruiting for two new Regional Coordinators and would value your prayer support as we search.

Well that just about wraps up my first ever blog. Was it good for you? I’m off now to celebrate with a Jaffa cake bar...