Sycamore Tree works

Well, April was pretty hectic wasn’t it? We’ve had more bank holidays than you can shake a stick at, Easter celebrations, a Royal wedding to make your Nan cry, I’ve been on holiday in East Sussex and enjoyed weather better than the med, a new series of Doctor Who has begun and whilst all this has been going on we’ve begun making preparations for the transfer of the national office from Essex to London.

I guess what I’m trying to say is that I’m sorry I haven’t posted anything for a while. I just didn’t want you thinking I had fallen foul to a super injunction or something. (note: my excuses for not blogging don’t stretch into May). If it’s any consolation, I still have plenty to say, here goes…

Sycamore Tree has challenged me as a man and changed the way I see certain things in life and I feel privileged to be a part of it. It had seemed to hit a small stumbling block recently however, when we discovered that we were going to lose the ability to operate in London prisons. The courses we run in these prisons represent about 12-15% of our programme provision annually. Add to this the issues around prison funding that are very much at the fore currently, and we were staring down the barrel of losing a huge number of courses which would leave us suffering a pretty lean spell as an organisation. We have been providing the Prison Service with 110 courses a year as an average over the last four years, at one point we looked like we might have to settle for around 85 this year.

We are not simply a business however. We are a Christian charity and we operate on a level above P&L finances. We believe that our work as an organisation is anointed and that we are doing God’s work in demonstrating love, forgiveness and a set of ethics and principles that mainstream society often struggles to come to terms with.

It will come as little surprise to those of you that share this faith, that despite all the issues we are facing with providing this programme, we are not losing any numbers of courses. We will still maintain our 110 course average this financial year.

The simple fact of the matter is that Sycamore Tree works. It is one of the most effective forms of intervention available to Her Majesty’s Prison Service. It challenges prisoners in a way much more profound than it has challenged me. It challenges our perception of justice, of crime, of rehabilitation and is achieving wider and wider recognition, which is why Prison Fellowship is this country’s largest provider of Victim Awareness programmes.

One of our Sycamore Tree tutors is currently writing a blog about her experiences tutoring a course, this blog is available on our website and will teach you a little more about Sycamore Tree. Don’t tell anyone, but she’s my favourite tutor!

I was listening to some politicians and other senior figures, talking about sentencing and prison populations last week. The discussion centered around the idea of reducing sentences if a guilty plea was entered early thus saving the victim the heartache of long, drawn out court cases as well as saving the taxpayer millions in court costs and imprisonment costs. This happens already but the conversation was about the possibility of increasing the discount to somewhere like 50%.

This is a hugely emotive subject and I suspect that most people will see things from the eyes of a victim who will doubtless question any reduction of sentence more often than not.

I cannot help thinking that sentence length is pretty immaterial if all we are going to do is lock them up and later release them. Whether that sentence is 6 months, 6 years or 16 years, if all we do is keep offenders out of sight and one day release them, without anything of note occurring in between, what have we really achieved? Perhaps a few days of positive newspaper headlines about clean streets and conviction rates are reason enough, I don’t know.

On another subject, my friend bought me a bottle of HP Guinness sauce and it is delicious. I wonder if we have any rules around product placement…