Four of the H&C News team recently enjoyed the privilege of dinner at The Clink, HMP Cardiff. The restaurant is located right beside the prison and as you enter it welcomes you warmly as do the front of house team. The front of house team struck me as all being employable at almost any restaurant. They knew how to meet, greet, present the menu and discuss it if needed and service was impeccable, without a hint of servility.
The food was excellent and the chefs and back of house team like the front, should be able to walk into a job anywhere when released. I’m not going to dwell on the food and service as there is a much more important point to raise here, the results from the work done by The Clink.
After dinner I sat out the back in the garden area with the restaurant manager Jason Lawrence and we talked over coffee. I wanted to understand more about how a group of ‘prisoners’ had been trained to operate such an enjoyable restaurant experience.
Jason’s passion and commitment to the restaurant team was evident not just in what he said but much more importantly through his actions. He manages his team effortlessly, they know what to do and how to do it. If you were anywhere else you would not dream of the circumstances that lead to this team coming together.
And that is the point, prisoners have been trained to conduct themselves in gainful employment and are very capable in what they do.
In each of their four HMP locations, The Clink train circa 50 prisoners a year in City & Guilds NVQs in Hospitality & Catering and Customer Service.
So let’s look at some background information on why and what are the benefits of prisoner rehabilitation.
Since the late 18th century prisons have combined elements of punishment with elements of rehabilitation. The rehabilitation of offenders is a key feature of the modern UK criminal justice system, and work to rehabilitate prisoners goes on, in varying degrees, in every prison.
While in the past, rehabilitation may have been directed at ‘reforming the character’ of prisoners, its focus is now on preventing reoffending.
In 1779 the British Government passed the Penitentiary Act, which made the rehabilitation of criminals a function of all prisons. Since then, while imprisonment has remained the central form of punishment in the criminal justice system, the emphasis on correction rather than punishment has steadily increased.
Rehabilitation techniques vary according to the nature of the offender, the type of offence committed, and the institution in question.
Techniques vary from educational and vocational training to help the offender learn a skill for use outside the prison, to psychological rehabilitation, dealing with various problems the individual offender may experience. Drug and alcohol addicted prisoners can also receive treatment for their condition in some prisons.
Despite the positive results from rehabilitation, for many the outlook that prisons are not intended to rehabilitate but rather solely to punish and protect the public retains considerable public support in some areas. Improved conditions and opportunities for rehabilitative activity in prisons generate the complaints that modern life behind bars is soft and too much like a ‘holiday camp’. Doubtless most that voice such an opinion have not sampled the holiday camp regime they refere to.
Nonetheless, there has been much criticism about the level of rehabilitation that actually occurs in the UK’s prisons, mainly due to a lack of funding for these programmes and prison overcrowding, which hampers effective delivery of many schemes.
Thousands of prisoners are released every year without anywhere to live, worsening problems of homelessness. Almost three-quarters of those in prison have mental health problems and almost two-thirds have drug and/or alcohol problems.
In 2010, Justice Secretary Ken Clarke published a green paper on sentencing and rehabilitation which set out plans to “break the destructive cycle of crime and prison” by ensuring that prisons become “places of hard work”, the priority being to reduce re-offending.
The proposed radical reforms included introducing regular working hours in prison, new measures to force criminals to make amends to victims and communities for the harm they have caused, and most controversially, introducing a ‘payment-by-results’ scheme with private providers being rewarded for reducing re-offending.
In a speech to the Centre for Social Justice in October 2012, Prime Minister David Cameron said his Government was engaged in “what can only be described as a rehabilitation revolution”– led by the new Justice Secretary Chris Grayling, whose main mission was “to see more people properly punished, but fewer offenders returning to the system.”
The Prime Minister called on charities, companies and voluntary organisations to help offenders reform by providing drugs and alcohol addiction treatments, education and skills training. “Do whatever it takes to get these people back living decent, productive lives,” he said. “We will pay you for that; but – and it is a major but – once again the payments will depend on results.”
Responding to the speech, the Rehabilitation for Addicted Prisoners Trust (RAPt), which provides drug and alcohol addiction treatment programmes in prisons, called on the Prime Minister to increase investment in their treatment programmes so that they could be offered to all addicted offenders.
According to RAPt, analysis of police data had shown that less than one third (31%) of substance misusing prisoners who completed a RAPt programme while in prison had reoffended within 12 months of release, compared with a predicted re-offending rate of over 70%; however, fewer than 3% of prisoners identified with a drug problem currently had access to the programmes.
For every 100 individuals, the RAPt programme saves £6.3 million on re-sentencing and re-incarcerating.
This would equate to savings of £440 million a year if the programme was offered to just 10% of drug dependent prisoners.
“When this Government came to power we were spending £40,000 a year (per person) just on banging people up. With payment by results, your money goes into what works: prisoners going straight, crime coming down, our country getting safer.
“It’s such a good idea I want to put rocket boosters under it….”
Prime Minister David Cameron in a speech to the Centre for Social Justice – October 2012
Our experience of visiting The Clink in HMP Cardiff is that their part in the rehabilitation of prisoners is working, and exceptionally well.
Denis Sheehan, Publisher, H&C News