Why prison doesn't work for women

Credit: Prison Reform Trust

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Many years ago, fellow journalist Loren Stein and I worked with the Center for Investigative Reporting in San Francisco on a year-long investigation into the alarming number of miscarriages among pregnant women in US prisons and jails. Packed into routinely overcrowded, understaffed and ill-equipped facilities, pregnant inmates were often denied essential pre-natal and emergency care. As a result, more than 30 percent of the imprisoned pregnant mothers lost their babies – in one prison, it was 80%.

We found that because women formed a small proportion of the US prison population, the system was generally ill prepared and ill equipped to look after them - and there was very little thought about the impact their incarceration had on their families.

A couple of decades later and on the other side of the pond, it looks like little progress has been made:

A day-long conference at Northumbria University, Newcastle, this Thursday (11 December), will address why prison doesn’t work for women.

Former prisoners, prison reform campaigners and criminologists will examine the impact that imprisonment has on women and their families.  They will also discuss effective alternatives to imprisonment that could help solve the problem of increasing reoffending rates for women.

Keynote speakers include Vicky Pryce, who served a prison sentence for perverting the course of justice and has recently authored Prisonomics, a book calling for reform for women prisons; Northumbria Police and Crime Commissioner Vera Baird; and Jenny Earle, director of the Prison Reform Trust’s programme to reduce women’s imprisonment.

Louise Ridley, Senior Lecturer in Criminology at Northumbria, will argue that the prison system has been designed for men and isn’t suited to the needs of women offenders.

“Women are mainly imprisoned for low level crimes, such as theft or handling stolen goods, which are often linked to their domestic situation. When men are imprisoned there is often a network of women – mothers, girlfriends, wives – who are caring for their children, paying the bills, and keeping their lives going so that they can more easily slip back into their family life when they are released. When women come out of prison they need support to rebuild their lives.”

Ridley argues that there is greater cost to the state when women are imprisoned as there is often the need to support their children in care during the custodial sentence. There also appears to be a larger domino effect when women with families are sent to prison.

 “Studies have found that children with mothers in prison are more likely to go on to offend than those with just the father in prison.”

The event is organised by The Centre for Offenders and Offending at Northumbria University, NEPACS, a regional charity providing support to prisoners and their families, the Prison and Offender Research in Social Care and Health Network (PORSCH), and OpenGate, a charity providing mentoring and support to women offenders returning to their community. 

You can follow the conference on Twitter: @PrisonNU & #wiprison

Iran parents halt killer's execution - the power of forgiveness

Courtesy of ABF

Yesterday, I read a great article in the Guardian about the power of forgiveness: "Iranian killer's execution halted at last minute by victim's parents" by Saeed Kamali Dehghan, a Guardian journalist based in Tehran.

Balal, a convict in his 20s was going to be publicly executed in Iran as so many are in this country. Seven years ago, he had stabbed 18-year-old Abdollah Hosseinzadeh during a street brawl in the small town of Royan, in the northern province of Mazandaran.

The mother of the victim approached, slapped him in the face, but she didn’t push the chair on which he stood as she was expected to, to participate in the punishment, according to Iran's Islamic penal code. 

Instead, what happened next marked a rarity in public executions in Iran, which puts more people to death than any other country apart from China, wrote Dehghan. She decided to forgive her son's killer. The victim's father removed the noose and Balal's life was spared.

“Balal's mother hugged the grieving mother of the man her son had killed. The two women sobbed in each other's arms – one because she had lost her son, the other because hers had been saved," Dehghan wrote.

This is significant because Iran is known for its high rate of executions and human rights abuses. The new president Hassan Rouhani has disappointed human rights activists for doing too little to improve Iran's human rights and not curbing its staggering use of capital punishment.

As of last week, 199 executions are believed to have been carried out in Iran this year, according to Amnesty International - a rate of almost two a day. Last year, Iran and Iraq were responsible for two-thirds of the world's executions, excluding China.

At least 369 executions were officially acknowledged by the Iranian authorities in 2013, but Amnesty International said hundreds more people were put to death in secret, taking the actual number close to 700.  I wrote a blog post in July 2013 about the 97 executions carried out just in that month, according to a report by from The Abdorrahman Boroumand Foundation (ABF), a non-governmental independent organisation dedicated to the promotion of human rights and democracy in Iran.

Iran is particularly criticised for its public executions, which have attracted children among the crowds in the past. Iranian photographers are often allowed to document them.  Studies have shown that the death penalty doesn’t provide any special deterrent. The public displays of killing, however, perpetuate a culture of acceptance of violence.

I wonder what would happen if more victims’ relatives could do like the Hosseinzadehs and pardon the convicts, if the crowds would stop gathering to watch the executions, if people would publicly object to them…

Judgement day – Iran Tribunal exposes mass massacres of the 1980s

 

Family members of political prisoners executed during mass massacres of the 1980s and the summer of 1988, gather at Tehran’s Khavaran cemetery to commemorate their loved ones/ Iran Tribunal 
 

Following a harrowing three-day hearing at the Peace Palace in The Hague, the Iran Tribunal, a tribunal of conscience, delivered its interim judgement on October 27^th.  According to the tribunal, the Islamic Republic of Iran committed crimes against humanity and gross violations of human rights against its citizens committed during “the bloody decade” of 1980s.

This is a monumental achievement for the survivors and families of the victims of the mass massacres of political prisoners in the 1980s. The Tribunal has allowed their voices to be officially recorded and heard in court for the first time in 25 years. Unlike atrocities in Rwanda, Srebrenica and General Pinochet's Chile, they never had any opportunity for justice and legal redress.

"The consequences of this judgment are profound,” says Prof John Cooper QC, the lead prosecutor at the tribunal. “It finally provides an independent and authoritative finding that the Islamic Republic of Iran [was] responsible for murdering and torturing [its] citizens on a staggering scale. This judgment, along with the carefully documented evidence from over 100 victims can now be presented to the international community as part of the victim's fight for justice.”

When the judgment was announced, the courtroom fell quiet.  The silence was thick with emotions held back for 25 years. Then the people in the assembly slowly stood up and held pictures of their loved ones killed by the Iranian regime in the purges of the 1980s.  All were weeping.

For me, it was an emotional moment as well as I have come to know many survivors and bereaved over the many years I’ve been trying to report the story. I’ve followed the making of the Iran Tribunal - a grassroots movement created by survivors and families of victims because no official bodies would investigate their complaints.  It is a testament to their determination and resilience that they’ve managed to put the truth out there after all these years. The process also exposes shortcomings of the UN and other international bodies, which were supposed to investigate these atrocities. For information about the Truth Commission, the first stage of the Iran Tribunal, click here.

Read my blog in the Economist about the Iran Tribunal’s judgement here.http://www.economist.com/blogs/newsbook/2012/10/iran-1988

Iran Tribunal to Uncover Iran's Srebrenica

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This picture is part of Prison Memoir in Painting by Iranian artist Soudabeh Ardavan. She spent eight years in Iranian prisons and survived the 1988 massacre. She painted this and many other prison's paintings by using her hair as a brush and toothpaste or tea as paint. She now lives in exile in Sweden.

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A People’s Tribunal will sit at Amnesty International’s headquarters in London on June 18-22 to unearth secrets the Iranian regime have managed to keep buried for more than two decades.  Survivors of torture and families of murder victims have managed against all odds to set up this international court to investigate the Iranian regime’s biggest state crime.

“When they took me to the death committee in Gohardasht prison, the lobby was piled high with sandals, glasses and blindfolds. That’s all that was left of our friends. They are all gone and I am alive. I am alive to tell their story. That’s my only goal,” says Mehdi Aslani, 53, who survived a mass massacre of political prisoners in Iran the summer of 1988.

Aslani and thousands of other victims have waited 24 years for this, but now they will finally have their day in court.

“The Tribunal’s main purpose is allowing evidence to be heard and allowing the world to find out what really happened in the 1980s in Iran,” says John Cooper, QC, chair of the Iran Tribunal’s steering committee. “It is incredible that torture survivors and families of murder victims have managed to achieve this on their own - and it is shocking they had to do this all on their own – that the UN did nothing.”

In the summer of 1988, the Islamic Republic of Iran executed in secret an estimated 5000 political prisoners across the country. The killing, ordered by an extraordinary fatwa issued by Ayatollah Khomeini himself, was relentless and efficient. Prisoners, including women and teenagers, were loaded on forklift trucks and hanged from cranes and beams in groups of five or six at a time in half-hourly intervals all day-long. The victims were intellectuals, students, leftists, members of opposition parties and ethnic and religious minorities. Many were jailed for no more than distributing leaflets, having a banned book or being accused by “a trusted friend of the regime,” according to Amnesty International.

The massacre was the climax of a massive elimination campaign conducted by the regime from 1981 to 1989: during that bloody decade around 20,000 political prisoners were executed across Iran.

“It is what I would term (based on my past work with the UN in Bosnia) ‘Iran’s Srebrenica’: a monumental atrocity that cannot remain unanswered,” says Payam Akhavan, professor of International Law at McGill University, first UN war crime prosecutor at The Hague and member of the Iran Tribunal.

The deliberate and systematic manner in which these executions took place constitutes a crime against humanity under international law, according to many human rights lawyers. (Widespread and systematic executions of a civilian population across the country, planned and ordered by the highest ranks of the Iranian government.)

Yet, to date, more than two decades after the massacre, there are still no investigation into this crime, no international pressure on the Iranian government to do so, and no recognition from Iran or the international community. In fact, many of the perpetrators are still in power and the international media seem to deliberately avoid covering this issue.

Over the past decades, survivors and families of the victims – many are mothers because the majority of the victims were very young - have campaigned for justice.  They have sent petitions to the UN, organized rallies and seminars and disseminated information on the Internet – but no one is listening.

After the massacre/ Soudabeth Ardavan

 “We are in the information age: with a click of a mouse, you can know what is happening in the far corners of the world. Yet more than 5,000 people were killed in two months in Iran and no one knows about it. It’s like nothing happened,” says Aslani, who lives in exile in Germany.

So the survivors and families of the victims have taken the matter into their own hands.   In 2007, they have come together to form the Iran Tribunal, modeled on the Russell Tribunal set up by British philosopher Bertrand Russelland French writer Jean-Paul Sartre in 1966 to examine American intervention in Vietnam, and the subsequent Russell Tribunals on Chile, Iraq and Argentine. Like these tribunals, the Iran Tribunal won’t have any legal status, but will act as a tribunal of conscience to deal with violations of international law that have not been recognized nor dealt with by existing international jurisdictions.

After five years of fundraising, outreach and assembling a team of prominent lawyers, the People’s Tribunal is now ready to proceed. It is organized in two parts: a Truth Commission and a Tribunal.  The Truth Commission, during which the court will hear and examine oral and written evidence from dozens of witnesses, is held at AI’s headquarters in London on June 18-22.  The Tribunal will then meet on October 25-27 in The Hague to issue a verdict.

Attendance is free, but you need to register. For more information, click here. To follow the proceedings live, click here.

Herman Wallace and Albert Woodfox "celebrate" 40 years in solitary confinment

Herman Wallace (left) and Albert Woodfox in Angola prison

 A couple of weeks ago, I wrote a post on two men who have spent 40 years in solitary confinement in Angola prison in Louisiana. Herman Wallace and Albert Woodfox have spent 23 hours of each day in the last 40 years in a 9ft-by-6ft cell. (Read why they are in prison here).

Yesterday, they "celebrated" their their 40th anniversary of solitary confinement. To mark the day, Amnesty International put pressure on the governor of Louisiana, Bobby Jindal, to release the two men from solitary by delivering a petition bearing more than 65,000 signatures  to the Louisiana State Capitol in Baton Rouge. AI calls their prolonged solitary incarceration a form of cruel and inhumane treatment that is banned under both the US constitution and international law.

"I can make about four steps forward before I touch the door," Herman Wallace said as he describes the cell in which he has lived for the past 40 years. "If I turn an about-face, I'm going to bump into something. I'm used to it, and that's one of the bad things about it."

I cannot begin to imagine how one can survive under these circumstances, so was very interested to find out in a Guardian article by Ed Pilkington yesterday about a new documentary that takes us inside that cell. The documentary, Herman's House, based on recorded conversations between Wallace and independent film-maker Angad Bhalla, tells us how it feels to live that way and what it does to you.

The film also describes the relationship between Wallace and a young artist called Jackie Sumell. The American artist was so outraged by his story that she decided to help him imaginatively escape from solitary confinement by having him design his perfect house. In 2003, she asked Herman a very simple question: "What kind of house does a man who has lived in a 6' x 9' box for over 30 years dream of?"

"What kind of house do a man in solitary dream about?" he says in the film. "I don't dream about no house. Being out there in the streets, even if I was homeless, I'd be satisfied."

But he does go on to design for Sumell his perfect house, sending her drawings and descriptions in words from which she builds a recreation of Herman's house as an art installation. 

"In the front of the house," he writes, "I have gardens full of gardenias, carnations and tulips. This is of the utmost importance. I would like my guests to be able to smile and watch the flowers all day long."

This extraordinary collaboration between Wallace and Sumell (called the House That Herman Built) has gained international recognition through its exhibition,  corresponding book and now soon the documentary. "The House That Herman Built"  is a testament to the human imagination, an illustration of kindness, an art project, and an introduction to history that highlights institutionalized racism in the United States," states Sumell's website. "Ultimately, Herman's House is a monument to resilience, courage, creativity and magnanimity."

The film "Herman's House", directed by Angad Bhalla and produced by Lisa Valencia-Svensson, will be shown at the Hot Docs International Documentary Festival on April 27. 

End 40 years of solitary confinement - Urgent Appeal

Albert Woodfox and Herman Wallace

Two men, likely to be innocent, have been locked up in solitary confinement in the infamous Angola prison in Louisiana for 40 years.

On Tuesday 17 April, it will be exactly 40 years since the men were first placed in solitary confinement. Amnesty International is marking the date by handing in a petition to the Governor of Louisiana, Bobby Jindal, calling on him to end their ordeal. 

In 1972, Albert Woodfox and Herman Wallace entered the Louisiana State Penitentiary in Angola in their twenties, convicted of the murder of a prison guard. Now in their sixties and in poor health, they are still in solitary confinement.

Each man spends 23 hours of every day in a cell measuring 2m by 3m. That’s about five steps long and three steps wide. The only view is of a small space beyond the prison bars. In good weather, they are allowed a solitary hour in an outdoor cage three times a week.

They have limited access to books and no opportunities for work or education. Social interaction is restricted to the occasional visit and limited phone calls. After living in these conditions for most of their lives, both Woodfox and Wallace suffer from serious health problems including osteoarthritis aggravated by lack of exercise, and functional impairment.

The men were convicted in 1972 of the murder of a prison guard, Brent Miller. No physical evidence links either to the crime and DNA evidence which may have cleared them has been lost. Over the years, documents have emerged suggesting the main eyewitness was bribed by prison guards.

The Louisiana prison review board has rubberstamped their ongoing isolation on 150 separate occasions, always citing the ‘nature of the original reason for lockdown’. By denying them any meaningful review of their isolation, the prison authorities have actually breached their own policies.

"If they did not do this – and I believe that they didn’t – they have been living a nightmare!" said Teenie Verret, widow of Brent Miller, in 2008.

Woodfox and Wallace believe their isolation (along with a third man, Robert King, incarcerated for separate crimes) was because of their political activism, and membership of the Black Panther Party. Collectively, Woodford, Wallace and King are known as the Angola 3.

King was released after 29 years of solitary confinement in 2011. The three men continue to campaign for justice, and recognition of the cruelty and illegality of their treatment in solitary confinement. You can read more about the Angola 3 here.

Please, sign Amnesty’s petition to end their cruel, inhumane and degrading treatment

Troy Davis’s execution – Abolish Death Penalty

I haven’t posted anything on my blog for a while because I was away in Ghana on a reporting trip. I’ll write about it later.  While I was away, Troy Davis was executed by the state of Georgia and this is what I want to write about. 

Davis was put to death by lethal injection on Wednesday September 21 for the killing of off-duty policeman Mark MacPhail in 1989, despite serious doubts about his guilt. He became the 34^th person executed in the US in 2011 – eight more death-row prisoners are scheduled to be executed this year.

Davis, 42, was sent to his death despite a mass of evidence casting his 1991 conviction in doubt, including recantations from seven of the nine key witnesses at his trial. No DNA evidence conclusively linked him to the murder.  His death was delayed for hours while the US Supreme Court considered an eleventh-hour appeal for clemency and his execution date had already been changed three times.

Outside the prison, hundreds of people gathered chanting: "They say, death row; we say, hell no".

Davis counted Pope Benedict XVI and former US President Jimmy Carter among his supporters, as well as US conservative figures like former member of the House of Representatives Bob Barr and former FBI director William Sessions. 

While on death row, he received up to 100 cards and letters a day from Amnesty International supporters. It helps to think he knew that people all around the world believed in his innocence and fought against his execution.

Davis maintained his innocence to the end, saying: “I did not have a gun. For those about to take my life, may God have mercy on your souls. May God bless your souls.”

As he lay strapped on the gurney, he told the family of MacPhail lined up behind a glass screen in front of him:  "I did not personally kill your son, father, brother.” 

After the Georgia pardons board denied clemency, Davis’ supporters – including  Amnesty International – began a public, viral campaign to encourage the local prosecutor and local judge to withdraw the execution order.

But it was in vain: it usually takes extraordinary circumstances and new evidence that decisively rules out the person convicted to change the legal presumption that the jurors made the correct decision and the defence lawyers and prosecutors did their jobs honestly and to the best of their abilities.

Davis’s execution has provoked an extraordinary outpouring of protest in the US and around the world, refocusing the debate on death penalty and the American south. 

Death penalty supporters are mostly from the southern or midwestern states. While the calls for Davis's reprieve poured into Georgia from all over the country and the world, few were likely to come from Georgia.   And that probably mattered more for the local prosecutor, judge and state-selected board than calls from more famous people out of state and abroad. 

Though 34 of the 50 states still have the death penalty, only 12 states carried out executions last year, and 80% of all executions take place in the south - and black people are over-represented.  Black males make up 15% of the population of Georgia, but they fill almost half the cells on its death row.

Davis’s execution has now created a groundswell in America of people "who are tired of a justice system that is inhumane and inflexible and allows executions where there is clear doubts about guilt,” says Brian Evans of Amnesty, which led the campaign to spare Davis's life. He predicted the debate would now be conducted with renewed energy.

Amnesty is urging people to re-double their commitment to abolish the death penalty worldwide.  Please sign their "Not IN MY Name Petition"  here.

Iran Tribunal to investigate Ayatollah's hidden legacy

As the Arab uprising is breathing a new life into the Iranian opposition, a remarkable new venture is slowly gathering pace outside the country: a sort of Russell Tribunal to investigate possible crimes against humanity perpetrated by the Iranian regime in the 1980s – especially in the summer of 1988.

In the summer of 1988, the Islamic Republic of Iran executed in secret a large number of political prisoners across the country – men, women and children. The killing was ordered by a fatwa issued by Ayatollah Khomeini. The victims were intellectuals, students, leftists, members of opposition parties and ethnic and religious minorities. Many were jailed for no more than distributing leaflets, having a banned book or being accused by “a trusted friend of the regime.”

The estimated number of victims ranks between 4,000 and 7,000.  The massacre was the climax of a massive elimination process executed by the regime from 1981 to 1988, under which around 20,000 dissidents disappeared, either dying under torture or being executed by firing squads. (Read my article on the massacre in the Toronto Star.)

The regime has never acknowledged the massacre, revealed how many were executed nor why. The execution of such a large number of people within such a short time and without any due process, violates many international human rights treaties to which Iran is signatory; yet the world has remained largely silent (Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch tried to raise the alarm, but the world was not interested). Most of the perpetrators are still in power today.

Many believe that the absence of accountability for those crimes has led to the culture of impunity so rampant in today’s Iran, where intellectuals are murdered, women stoned, students tortured.

“Nobody has been brought to justice,” Drewery Dyke, Amnesty International’s Iran researcher, told me when I interviewed him for a piece about the massacre in the New Internationalist (read it here). “Impunity for such appalling crimes only leads to further human rights abuse.”

This picture is part of Prison Memoir in Painting by Iranian artist Soudabeh Ardavan. She spent eight years in Iranian prisons and survived the 1988 massacre. She painted this and many other prison's paintings by using her hair as a brush and toothpaste or tea as paint. She now lives in exile in Sweden.

Over the past 22 years, survivors of the massacre and families of the victims have pleaded for justice before the international community – to no avail. Every September since 1988, they have commemorated the massacre in Iran and all over the world, holding vigils, organizing rallies and seminars, and disseminating information on the internet — willing the world to listen, acknowledge and condemn the terrible events the Islamic Republic wants the world to forget. But no one is listening.

So now, the survivors and families of the victims have decided to act on their own.   They have set up the Iran Tribunal – a sort of Russell Tribunal to investigate these crimes and judge them according to international law.

Like the second and more recently established Russell Tribunal - the Russell Tribunal on Palestine -  the Iran Tribunal won’t have any legal status, but will act as a Tribunal of conscience to deal with violations of international law that have not been recognized nor dealt with by existing international jurisdictions.

After two and a half years of groundwork and preparation, the Iran Tribunal recently formed a Steering Committee, in charge of organizing the tribunal, selecting judges, prosecutors and defense teams and the jury.   The committee is comprised of prominent jurists and human rights activists from Iran and around the world, and chaired by John Cooper QC, a British criminal law and human rights barrister.

The Tribunal is expected to be operational by early 2012. For more information, click here.

Sakineh's Forced Confession

Sakineh Mohammad Ashtiani is still alive; she has apparently confessed "sin of adultery" to Iran TV.

Appearing on TV for the third time since her case caught the world's attention, Ashtiani reiterated her previous televised "confessions" that she was involved in the murder of her husband. "I am a sinner," she said. Her face was blurred and the interview, conducted in her native Azeri language, was subtitled in Farsi.

During the interview, Ashtiani also accused Mina Ahadi, an activist of the German-based International Committee Against Stoning (Icas), who has been successful in bringing her case to the world's attention. The broadcast, on Iran's Channel 2, portrayed Ahadi as "a communist dissident exiled in Germany", who had taken advantage of Ashtiani 's case for her own benefit.

There were also alleged confessions from her son Sajad Ghaderzadeh, her lawyer Houtan Kian and the two German journalists detained while interviewing Ghaderzadeh and Kian last month.

The programme stated that her lawyers, Mohammad Mostafaei and Kian, promoted her case because "they were looking for excuses to claim asylum in western countries".  Mostafaei, Ashtiani 's first lawyer, was arrested and subsequently forced to leave Iran after giving interviews to foreign press. He is now in Norway. Kian, who represented Ashtiani after Mostafaei, has been jailed since October and claimed that Ashtiani was beaten and tortured before appearing on TV for the first time.

Forced TV confessions, especially of political prisoners, are common in Iran.   I have met many Iranian former political prisoners and all said they have been tortured so that they would publicly confess their “sins” and recant their allegiances and beliefs.

 In his disturbing book “Tortured Confessions",  historian Ervand Abrahamian explains that the use of systematic torture in Iran’s prisons is not conducted to obtain information, but a public confession and ideological recantation. For the victim, whose honour, reputation and self-respect are destroyed, the act is a form of suicide.

In Iran, a subject's "voluntary confession" reaches a huge audience via television. The accessibility of television and use of videotape have made such confessions a primary propaganda tool, says Abrahamian, and because torture is hidden from the public, the victim's confession appears to be self-motivated, increasing its value to the authorities.  Similar public recantation campaigns have been led in Maoist China, Stalinist Russia and by the religious inquisitions of early modern Europe.

Out of Prison and Trying to go Straight – an ex-inmate records his attempts to put his criminal past behind him

Paul outside Wandsworth prison/photo by Caroline Irby

Can you really change after a life of crime? How easy is it to escape an addiction? And if you are trying to go straight, what help is available? These were the questions that prompted photographer Caroline Irby and I to follow Paul Johnston’s progress after his release from prison, where he had served eight years of a ten-year sentence for aggravated burglary. 

We first met Paul in September 2008 inside London’s Wandsworth prison, then at the prison's gates on his release and continued to track his journey as the weeks, months and finally years passed: in a greasy-spoon in Clapham Junction, at St Pancras, the Tate Modern - in cafes, on buses and on the street - then back in prison, in Hull, where he was in secondary rehab after his re-release, and finally now back in London. 

Now 48, Paul grew up in Fulham, London. His mother was a school dinner lady, his father a truck driver. Many members of his family and friends are involved in crime and drugs. Two of his brothers are currently in prison, one for life. Paul has been addicted to alcohol and drugs since he was 17, and has spent most of his life in prison. He is separated from his wife and has three children: a son, 27, who was in prison with him and now lives in Spain, a daughter, 18, and another son, 16.

Towards the end of his sentence, Paul decided to turn his life around and enter a rehabilitation programme run by Rapt (the Rehabilitation for Addicted Prisoners Trust). "I’ve been in jail all over the country for all these years, dealing and using drugs. At some point, I decided I had enough. I got desperate. I wanted my life to be more than this. It sounds flowery, but I want to be a better person."  In prison, Paul worked with St Giles Trust, a charity training prisoners and gained professional qualifications. He now wants to do a counseling degree, and then open a boxing/counseling centre for at risk youths with a friend, a former professional boxer.

But as with many of the 95,000 inmates released every year, Paul’s journey was not going to be easy.   Our piece (selected extracts from copious notebooks) chronicling his attempts to put his criminal past behind him over the past two years was published in the Guardian (G2) on August 5.  The piece is constructed as a diary in which Paul talks openly about his regrets, his fear of leaving behind the only life he has ever known, his worries about his lack of money and a place to stay, and his anger and frustration at all the administrative hurdles he has to jump over. Looking back at his life, he talks about his childhood, what makes him trip, what gives him hope and strength.

The piece ends on a depressing note: Paul is pretty desperate – he has no job, no money and no idea how to live a normal life. But the article shows how important RAPt and other drug rehabilitation and reinsertion programmes are, and how without sustained help to find a job and housing, ex-offenders have little hope to succeed outside. Considering that keeping an inmate behind bars costs  about £44,000 a year, investing in good, consistent rehabilitation/resettlement programmes would be money well spent.

Read our article here.