St Giles Trust – Jimmy’s story
From long term drug addict, to voluntary adviser of prisoners, to management, to the 2012 Olympics. St. Giles Trust supported Jimmy in his first steps away from a life of offending that had spanned 20 years.
Jimmy was one of the first prisoners trained by St Giles to NVQ3 in Advice and Guidance.
Read the full success story on the St. Giles Trust website – Real life cases : Jimmy’s story
Action for Prisoner’s Families
APF is the national membership organisation representing the needs of organisations working with families of prisoners across England and Wales.
They represent the views and experiences of their members – organisations providing direct services to the families of people in prison – as well as of families themselves. They support the development of new and existing services, promote good practice on working with prisoners, their children and families both in prison and in the community, publish information, influence policy and raise awareness of the impact of imprisonment on children and families.
Action for Prisoner’s Families
What hope for prisoner rehabilitation?
Prison is meant to rehabilitate. Eric Allison writes on prisons and criminal justice in the Guardian’s Joe Public blog, on questions of mistreatment of officers by other officers and asks what hope there is for prisoners in such an environment. – 9th April 2008.
Comments included:
“Nobody takes real responsibility for rehabilitation; it’s against the spirit of our punitive times. Lip-service only is paid to it. Probation was long ago converted to an organisation devoted to ‘managing’ offenders (public protection) or dispensing community punishment. Prison governors always, and I mean always, have security as their number one priority. And so there is no real advocacy for rehabilitation. What is needed is effective case work on behalf of individual prisoners to assist rehabilitation. Offender behaviour programmes, education, resettlement initiatives and the rest are delivered piecemeal. There are some successes, but in general prisons do containment and punishment reasonably well, but not rehab. Which, in the end, produces negative and demoralising effects on prisoners and staff alike.
To introduce a proper rehabilitative regime in prisons and on release will take political vision and courage. It ain’t there”
and …
“Not using the opportunity prison provides to do something positive is one of the most mystifying state failures. Here you have criminals, both career and nascent, gathered together, under government control, 24 hours a day. And what do we do with them? Educate them? Teach them skills that could lead to jobs in the outside world? Give them serious and continued help to get off drugs?
Nope, we just lock them up for hours on end, and pay thousands for the privilege. Bonkers, absolutely bonkers.”
Ino Mag website launched
The Ino Mag website has been launched.