Tag: prison reform

Why George the Poet almost moved me to tears

Author: | 29 Nov 2021

November 2021 saw the return of the Longford Lecture on prison reform. Spoken word artist George the Poet headlined as guest speaker, declaring ‘the game is rigged’ and calling for prisons to become ‘development centres’.

He began, however, with a message for the music industry. Longford scholar Kyle was in the audience….  

Hello, my name is Kyle and I am a third year scholar, currently completing a Mathematics degree. To be honest, I see myself as a numbers guy more than a crafter of words but after being moved almost to tears by George the Poet at the 19th annual Longford lecture, I wanted to take a moment to put down my take on a memorable evening. And reflect on why his words meant so much to me.

This was my first Longford lecture. Amazing.

For a start, it was refreshing to see so many people who believe in change and rehabilitation gathering in Westminster from all different walks of life, many I suspect like my mum who came with me, may have been hearing George Mpanga (the Cambridge University- educated spoken word artist and social commentator famous for the Have you heard George’s podcast) for the first time.

The 500 or so people were gathering after a two year break due to Covid-19 with a common purpose of rehabilitation, with a shared belief in second chances. As someone who spent time inside myself, knowing the event was being aired into cells nationwide sent a powerful message, ‘you may be out of sight, but you are very much in mind.’

So what did I make of George on the night?

George, as I know from following him for many years, has passionate views about what happens in our prisons, about the urgent need for reform and rehabilitation. He’d hinted at what he was going to say in an in-depth interview in the Observer newspaper but nothing prepares you for the mesmerising in-person performance (which you can watch again here).

‘RAP’S NOT MUSIC!’ he declared.

He’d begun with a sentence which smoothly blended into a rap and then I realised: he’s rapping, this is a poem!

The first quote which struck me was,

‘Rap is a commodity, got to be the best thing adapted by poverty.

So if so many have seen a pay-out, why aren’t the communities guaranteed a way out?’ from his 2015 poem Rap’s Not Music.

When I talked to my mum afterwards I realised she, may be like others in the audience, may have been in the dark about what George was trying to get across.

It boils down to this. Often in RAP music artists talk about their upbringing, a common reality of drugs, struggles, violence, no support. Prison and trauma are part of their everyday reality and reflect the environment they grew up in.

I agree with what George says about commodity, he articulates a worrying distortion. RAP music is from a minority, typically born of poverty ‘on the streets’ but attracts the majority. These minority issues aren’t usually addressed or spoken about.  So, it’s powerful when people voice their situation and problems through the art of music.

But homegrown RAP music is BIG business, with the biggest market share of streamed music in the United Kingdom. It’s frustrating people are listening but not understanding the symptoms of poverty.

A quick side note here. I can relate to George and his background. He went to a London boys’ grammar school where he felt out of place, travelling for more than an hour each way to a leafy suburb from his home area, a poor part of London.  I remember being the only black person in my year 7 top set maths and science class at school, I’ve always been academic. It felt odd, no-one wanted to sit next to me.

May be it was because my friends were getting into trouble, some were bullies. Or may be due to race, upbringing or behaviour. I don’t know exactly. It’s hard to describe the feeling but I knew I was different from everyone in my class.

George knows what it feels like not to fit in. We need to stop people becoming lost in system.

Let’s remember the ‘The game is rigged‘ says George…’Crime and Imprisonment are predictable.’

  • 54% of young people in prison have been in care
  • 52% of children in police custody are from British Asian or Minority Ethnic backgrounds

Can you imagine the trauma of being in care? This trauma will often lead people to commit crimes. Whilst poorer communities struggle in self destruction, music companies are making big money, profiting from poverty.

Surely, there’s a moral duty on the music industry to make a change, to reinvest and address the community problems which sell their music.

This is such a central point I wanted to be sure my Mum had understood.

He also had important things to say about education and prisons. Back to statistics, he quoted the 34% of adult prisoners who read English below the level expected of an 11-year-old. Prisons need to change from punishment centres to development centres, a vision which most of us share.

Prison should be about second chances and changing people lives, for the better, for our communities and for a positive rehabilitation, breaking the cycle and reinvesting into our futures.

‘There are no choices without chances.’ That’s the bottom line.

Again, we need to stop people becoming lost in the system. I was that boy, like George the Poet. who didn’t quite fit in anywhere, not in school nor in my home area. I feel more that I do now. It has taken many years for me to feel accepted – a long journey with a lot of mistakes on the way.

Since my release from prison I’ve grabbed a lifeline, one where I’m pulling myself back into society, on the right side of the law.

I will be forever thankful and remember the likes of George the Poet for his inspiring words and work.

 

You can watch a recording of George the Poet’s speech by clicking on the link here. 

 

 

 

 

Wasting potential

Author: | 30 Apr 2019

Wasting prisoners’ potential to change their lives through education: Dame Sally Coates reviewed prison education for the government.

Here’s her verdict for Longford Blog on the newly-introduced reforms that followed her report….

In my own education world, I often hear teachers complaining that ministers in Whitehall move too quickly in introducing reforms without allowing them time to bed in. When it comes to prisons and the Justice Department, however, the opposite seems to be the case.  “Unlocking Potential”, the independent review that I lead into prison education at the request of Michael Gove, the then Justice Secretary, was delivered in May 2016.  Three years on, some of what was recommended is finally starting to trickle down into our jails.

Despite the delay, I welcome it as good news. Too many reports on how to improve our prisons end up gathering dust on shelves in Whitehall – though I can’t help remembering that Michael Gove did promise me, at the public launch of my report, to implement it, “without hesitation, repetition or deviation”.

Governor autonomy: a vital first step

His successors may not have fully honoured that commitment, but giving prison governors autonomy over how their education budget is spent, as is now happening and as was suggested in my report, is a vital first step. Governors have to take ownership of the education that is provided in their prisons – just as, for example, they take responsibility for security – rather than see it as something handed down from Prison Service headquarters.  When I was visiting prisons for my report, I came across governors who didn’t even know which organisation was providing the education in their jail.

In schools, headteachers are held to account for the education they deliver.  That is the strongest lever we have over their performance.  Prison governors need to be subject to similar scrutiny.  Having autonomy over the education budget is the best way to introduce that.  Progress is being made at last, for which two cheers out of three.

How it will work in practice….

It is not a full three because, under the new arrangements, the contracts for delivering education in prisons have been awarded to the same four providers as previously. What I had envisaged in my report was that there would be multiple providers coming into the system.  Now there is nothing wrong with sticking to the same four, if they are all good, but if governors truly are to have autonomy, then they have to be able to change providers if they aren’t satisfied with what is being delivered in their prison.  And I am not convinced that this is going to be easy to achieve under the new system.

In theory it may be possible, but because prisons have grouped together to work with particular providers, if one governor wants to hire and fire teachers, he or she can’t act autonomously but will have to go to the education provider, who employs those teachers.  If the provider then refuses, it is far from clear what happens next, but one thing is for sure. It is not going to be straightforward. Governors have a lot of other pressing matters to cope with rather than tackling poor teaching.

Room for innovation….

There are, I must stress, positive aspects to the new governor autonomy.  The DPS – or Dynamic Purchasing System – that has been introduced will give governors a budget to let out one-year contracts to bring other education providers into the prison to run individual courses. This will incentivise trying out new approaches and increase the range of options on offer to prison learners, especially in vocational subjects that don’t always sit easily in classrooms.

What’s not included?

To see if such innovation is actually delivering, though, we have to be able to monitor and evaluate it. And for that reason I am disappointed that my recommendation that every prisoner should have an individual learning plan – that follows him or her through the system, and allows the education provided to be measured against what has been agreed – still hasn’t become routine.  It remains, I am told, an ambition.  Yet without it how can governors be held to account over whether the education they are using their budgets to provide is genuinely meeting educational needs?

And where, too, is any improvement in IT access to promote education for which I argued strongly? Yes, there are now at best a handful of prisons allowing limited digital access in cells via tablets, but rarely is it set up to be used for learning.  That is such a waste! How effective it could be in encouraging prisoners to use their time in their cell to learn, and all without officers having to be involved to escort them to the education wing or the library?

Without radical reform, prisoners’ huge potential wasted….

My core belief back in 2016 was that good, targeted education is absolutely fundamental in bringing about prisoner rehabilitation.  That is why I argued in my report for a radical overhaul of the education system in prisons. What has now been introduced, however, doesn’t sound anywhere near radical enough. And that means the huge potential of prisoners to change their lives through education is continuing to be wasted.