It's just not cricket

Let me start by apologising that I haven’t posted a blog entry for a couple of weeks. I have been unwell and had some time off (cue sympathy). Due to my unscheduled time off I have been particularly busy since my return (insert more sympathy here). Nevertheless I am here now and I have much to talk to you about, starting with the cricket.

Cricket fans among you will be aware that India played Sri Lanka in the world cup final at the weekend. Non cricket fans, prepare to be educated. The captain of the Indian team is a chap called Mahendra Singh Dhoni, an accomplished batsman and also the team’s wicket keeper. He hadn’t had a very good tournament up to the final. His batting had been indifferent at best and he hadn’t managed a decent score in any of the matches. When the final came around, Sri Lanka batted first and posted a pretty decent total. When India’s turn came to bat, they lost their star openers very quickly and when the third wicket fell India could have been in trouble.

The skipper decided to take responsibility. He put himself up the batting order and came out to bat earlier than he normally would, despite the fact he had been having a poor tournament, despite the fact that another quick wicket would have put Sri Lanka in a commanding position and despite the fact he will have felt the weight of expectation of over a billion, fanatical Indian cricket fans, he stuck his hand up and shouldered the responsibility. He finished the game on 91 not out, India won and Dhoni was carried off the field a national hero.

I am inspired by his actions during the biggest game of his career. Against all the odds, he stood up to be counted and put in a tournament winning performance that has changed the lives of his team mates.

In truth I know hundreds of ‘Mahendra Singh Dhonis’ all around the country. People who face adversity, prejudice and a society that wants to say no, but who stick their hand up and change lives. People who freely give so much of their time to help offenders change, to help families stay in touch and to share some unconditional love with people the rest of society wants to forget about. I have story after story about lives changing because of someone who stuck their hand up and took responsibility some of which I have shared with you.

We all want a better society. We all want a safer society. We all want to see victims healed. We all want to see offenders change, stop offending and do something positive. We all want to see children that don’t go without, families who are supported, indeed, who support each other. Well I have news for you. It’s not going to happen by itself. We owe it to ourselves, to our families and to each other to stick our hands up. If we’re not prepared to stand up in any way, to take any kind of responsibility then I’m afraid we have little right to complain.

Have a think for a moment about all the times you have talked about criminals, prisons, victims, justice and the courts over a coffee or a pint. Consider all the times you have shaken your head and tutted at a newspaper report or a TV documentary. Think about all the criticism you have levelled from your armchair. Now ask yourself if you could be a Mahendra Singh Dhoni. Look at Sycamore Tree and see how Restorative Justice tears up what we thought we knew about justice. Look at Angel Tree and consider how many vulnerable children, unsupported by our society are given a little joy.

If you are not a Prison Fellowship Volunteer but you care at all about Justice, reducing offending behaviour, keeping families together and you recognise how little difference there is between you and a ‘criminal’, become a Prison Fellowship Volunteer right now! If you are a Prison Fellowship Volunteer then go and make a cup of tea because you know all this already.

Whatever you do, do something. I spent a lifetime thinking the same as everyone else, judging, offering opinions about topics I didn’t really understand. In the end, it’s just not cricket.

Change happens

As I type this week’s blog entry I am sitting in our new office in London. As I do I am reminded that things change. Often they change on a timescale not to our liking but they change nevertheless. For example, I had a foot-long sub in front of me just a few minutes ago and now I do not. Change is necessary and it will affect us all. Beyond the changes in the condition of my lunch, I face changes in my working situations as well. Charities the length and breadth of the country are facing increasingly difficult times due to the financial situation, and Prison Fellowship are not exempt from these pressures. This is why we are re-locating our central support office.

We are normally afraid of change and do everything in our power to stop it. It is only with hindsight that we ever appreciate it. Just 13 years ago Prison Fellowship were nervously tip toeing into our first ever Sycamore Tree programme. 15 prisoners (probably as nervous as we were) took that programme and it took us a year or two to find our feet. Since then the programme has changed both in structure and in availability. Now we expect over 100 courses each year. By the end of this financial year we will have run almost 1,050 programmes and taught around 16,500 prisoners. We even have a strategic plan to develop our provision to 200 and then 400 programmes a year.

It is a similar story with Angel Tree. 1994 saw our first attempt at this programme in just one prison, with 40 children receiving a Christmas present. Now we run in 76 prisons and almost 4,500 children received a Christmas present this year. In addition to this we now operate Angel Tree in two new ways, family fun days and Mother’s Day. Our strategic vision is to reach 20,000 children and to have Angel Tree, in one form or another, available in every prison in the land. I wonder what the volunteers buying those first 40 presents will have thought about that.

The plans we have for the future will require much change and even more courage, but we mustn’t forget who we serve. The prison scene has changed as well. The number of prisoners in this country has grown and grown, as a result the need to support their families has also grown. The only thing that doesn’t appear to have changed is our broad, societal approach to justice. We are still totally pre-occupied with those three eternal principles of justice: what law has been broken, who did it and how are we going to make them pay?

When oh when will this change?

As the country’s largest provider of Restorative Justice programmes, Prison Fellowship is pretty well placed to query whether this approach is at all sustainable. I have written before and I will write again, that the best way I know to reduce the ridiculous reoffending rates we have in this country, is to take up a Restorative Justice approach. Forget about retribution and think about restoration. Let’s think about: Who’s been hurt, what are their needs and who’s responsibility are they?

I’m not a nuclear physicist, or a member of MENSA. I was not a child prodigy and I don’t consider myself a genius. I am capable of some fairly rational thought however, and it is my humble observation that prison ‘aint working’. Perhaps Carol Vorderman might be able to explain how the reoffending rate increases the more people we put inside. Two and two makes four however much you claim to the contrary. Change is what is required. How many more years must we continue trying to force a square peg into a round hole?

We have heard much about a rehabilitation revolution, perhaps it is finally coming, though I shan’t hold my breath. It is currently possible to spend 20 or 30 years dipping in and out of prison and yet never truly understand the impact of your crimes. Until this changes, I’m afraid the results of imprisonment won’t either and as a result, you will have to listen to people like me complaining for a while yet.

Prison Fellowship will continue to facilitate change in the lives of offenders, families and victims, I will continue to embrace the changes to the way we do so and I will also continue to pray for the day we see real change in the way justice is provided in this country.

Incidentally I am not too unhappy about the change in my sub, it looked nice on my desk but it’s much better where it is.

Freedom and Fortune

Last week I talked a little about a TV programme I had watched. Actually I talked quite a lot about it. This week I am going to do the same because I saw a couple of things on TV that have given me a perspective re-boot. I’m not talking about England’s cricket world cup loss to Ireland, nor am I talking about the league cup final between Arsenal and Birmingham. Those of you following this blog will know why.

What I am talking about is a group of celebrities living in the slums of Kibera, Kenya. This is the largest slum in Africa measuring around 1.5 miles squared and home to a million people. The locals survive in conditions you and I can only imagine, in mud huts with open sewers outside, where 1 in 5 children will die before they reach 5 years of age and latrines are shared by up to 1,000 people. I’m not ashamed to tell you that I was in tears for much of this programme. It’s not a story of hope or of humanity. Things won’t really get better there it seems.

What this programme did for me is to reaffirm just how fortunate I am to be in the position I am in. Compared to the Kiberan people, I have never had a problem in my life. You can argue that life problems are relative and there will be an amount of credit in that, but my worries and concerns do not involve sharing a 12 foot mud hut, located at the foot of a mountain of refuse, with 8 family members mostly dying of some disease or another.

It also made me think about how fortunate we are in our culture in so far as the ability we have to help people in our own towns and cities. Given the nature of the issues people all over the world have to overcome, it is a nonsense that we should have homelessness, child poverty and social injustice at all in a country as rich as we are. I know that I sound idealistic and am probably dreaming but I really do believe that we have the power to change these situations. All we need is enough people who care. I don’t mean people who consider these things and feel some vague notion that something should be done. I mean people who recognise their responsibilities in their own communities to influence the lives of the people around them, and who possess enough get-up-and-go to act.

People like this make Prison Fellowship what it is. In 30 years of operations we have built a base of almost 1,400 committed volunteers who have influenced the lives of countless individuals. Since Sycamore Tree has been running our volunteer teams have taught over 15,000 prisoners and we know what impact we have had on their attitudes. So far as our records go back I can tell you that Angel Tree volunteers and supporters have sent over 30,000 Christmas presents to the children of offenders and we know what impact this has on family relations.

As we race toward the financial year end, we will have run 118 Sycamore Tree programmes which will have benefitted well over 2,000 prisoners once again. We managed to send 4,500 Christmas gifts with Angel Tree which represents our biggest year ever.

I have spent years in retail hospitality management and whilst it was fun and it gave me a massive collection of skills and experiences, it is simply not comparable to working for an organisation that actually makes a difference in people’s lives. I don’t know how many people I have told how proud it makes me to be doing what I do. I don’t know if you can tell!

I am also proud that I can openly talk about the fact that I do what I do in the name of God and for my faith in him. So many people who feel a spiritual duty to help are told they cannot talk openly about their faith. We have seen some high profile cases recently that prove my point, and I am glad that I can take advantage of my freedom, for the time being at least.

While I am enjoying this freedom I am also going to continue enjoying the lime torte my wife made for me for my birthday this weekend…

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...