The Virtuous Circle of Prison Partnerships

Working with offenders can potentially be rewarding for the participants and the local communities that engage them. David Lancashire, from the Enterprise and Supply department of HM Prison Service, spoke to The Waste Paper about the benefits of these schemes.

Chances are, you don’t spend much time thinking about what goes on inside your local prison. Or, if you do, TV and movies provide you with a bloody and shocking vision of prison life. Would you be surprised to learn of prisoners who spend their days making clothes for disadvantaged children or refurbishing kids’ scooters? What about if you were dropping off some materials to be recycled at a local community group – would you expect the workers on site to be offenders out on day release?

As a result of partnerships between HM Prison Service and community waste organisations, prisoners are becoming more involved with recycling and reuse. And it’s good news all round. The injection of manpower into green schemes that prisoners provide means increased rates of recycling, which is good for the environment. Their labour also provides for a better local economy. Furthermore, the skills that the prisoners learn can help them find work once they are released.

Typically, offenders are involved with community waste organisations in two ways: they either work on projects (usually furniture refurbishment) in workshops within the prisons, or they go out into the community under Release on Temporary Licence (ROTL) and help out at the organisation’s site. Even when prisoners just work on furniture refurbishment, it can have be a positive influence on the prisoners. According to David Lancashire, Commercial Manager for HM Prison Service, anecdotal evidence is encouraging: “Having spoken to prisoners in these workshops, they really felt they were making a worthwhile contribution.”

The East Durham Partnership (EDP), a charitable organisation that aims to raise the status of its disadvantaged residents, is one such example of a community organisation that is successfully working with the Prison Service. EDP recovers furniture and white goods from council tips. If the goods can be reused, these items are sent to prisons, where offenders work to refurbish them. Not only does this reuse mean that furniture is diverted from landfill, but it also means a potential reduction in the carbon emissions that would result from new furniture being made and transported in place of the refurbished items. Once the prisoners have refurbished the furniture, it is sold at at facourable rate to socially and economically disadvantaged persons - this can mean a vital opportunity to cheaply furnish their homes.

Have you ever wondered what happened to that bike you had stolen? It may be languishing at the bottom of a river or cast off on another road. However, there’s also a chance that it has a new home! Police forces around country recover abandoned bicycles from the streets, but instead of sending these to landfill, they are are sent to Prison Service contract workshops. Here they are refurbished, returned to the police and then fed back into the community.

The Prison Service is also currently in talks to work with Kids’ City, a charitable organization in London which runs a network of after-school groups, many of them in socially disadvantaged areas. The plan is that prisoners could soon be working to refurbish scooters for the children. David Lancashire says: “We’re also discussing with them the prospect of actually making some clothes for them. Within the prison service, we don’t just have contract workshops, we have industries and one of those industries is the textile industry. So it’s quite possible to actually make a range of clothing for them.” The Prison Service is also talking to CRN UK about a partnership that would see offenders at New Hall (a women’s prison in Yorkshire) working to refurbish cots and prams in the workshops. These cots and prams can then be provided to the community at reduced rates. Although these particular partnerships are still in the early stages, it’s apparent these schemes can make a difference to their local communities.

Partnerships with community waste organisations can be even more of a positive experience for prisoners on day release. Mr Lancashire explains: “Prisoners go out into the community under ROTL, Release on Temporary Licence. That would be risk assessed prisoners literally leaving a prison to work with an organisation on the ‘outside’ to get work experience. Now that would normally happen when the prisoner is reaching the end of his or her sentence and they would normally be released from a category D prison (an open prison, where prisoners would generally end their sentence). Certainly there are many, many prisoners out there in the community, doing work and then coming back to prison at the end of the working day.”

These day-release programs can help to ease prisoners back into life outside of prison. Offenders also learn valuable skills that can lead to certificates or even formal qualifications. Although prisoners are mainly offered the chance to earn NVQs, Mr Lancashire says they also aspire to one day offer WAMITAB (Waste Management Industry Training and Advisory Board) qualifications in the field of recycling.

Mr Lancashire comments: “Our driving force is to reduce re-offending. It’s been demonstrated that if a prisoner is released from prison, one of his or her best ways of not coming back to prison is if they have a job to go to when they’re released, or the skills to acquire one. So what we’re hoping to do – and we think we’re enjoying a measure of success – through these activities, we hope to give them legitimate training and, if possible, qualifications, which will allow them to become a lot more employable when they’re released.”

Although no concrete data exists on how these schemes affect rates of re-offending, Mr Lancashire feels that they are successful in keeping ex-offenders out of prison once they are released. He says that there are widespread examples of employers willing to hire prisoners upon release, on the basis of the skills they learned whilst in prison. He concludes: “Of course, if a prisoner manages to – via this process – find employment on the outside, having been released, that makes for a better society.”

If your community group is interested in forging a partnership with the Prison Service, there are two ways to get in contact with the right people. You can either talk to David Lancashire at the Enterprise and Supply department (tel: 02072171730; email: david.lancashire@hmps.gsi.gov.uk), or contact the Resettlement Officer at your local prison.

David Lancashire describes the process of offenders working with community groups as a “virtuous circle”. Indeed, it’s possible to see that these partnerships can effect a real difference – economically, socially and environmentally.