Tag: prisons

An eye opening trip to visit Uganda prisons

Author: | 10 Nov 2022


As part of our Employability project, this summer two current Longford Scholars won travelling scholarships to spend five weeks working with the charity Justice Defenders in Ugandan prisons.  One of the two, Wayne, reflects in conversation on what he gained by the experience 

Why did you apply to go to Uganda?

The opportunity immediately spoke to me – to my passions, and to my personal and professional experiences. I was about to graduate in my BA (Hons) degree in Youth Work and Community Development. My own experiences of the criminal justice system as a whole are what motivate me. Having the chance to experience how it operates in Uganda seemed too good to miss.

As I have become more reflective about my own adverse childhood experiences that resulted in abandonment, helplessness, homelessness, drug addiction and imprisonment, I have been questioning what my next steps in life should be, how can I use my lived experienced and the academic knowledge I have gained to make a real difference in the world? This informed my wish to go to Uganda.

What were you expecting to find there?

I didn’t really know. I was aware of where Uganda currently is economically, and that it was going to be a culture shock in comparison to conditions in prisons in the UK.

How was it different from what you were expecting?

Seeing something with your own eyes can be difficult to process. It was clear that there is a lot of need there. It could leave me feeling overwhelmed and helpless over where to begin, or what to do to support those going through a system that gives them such limited support upon release. It just places them back in the cycle of fighting to survive. It was hard to witness.

What was it like going into a Ugandan prison?

Thanks to Justice Defenders, we were welcomed by the prison staff but, once inside, it quickly became daunting. It was overcrowded and there were limited opportunities for education or work as part of rehabilitation. That was having an adverse effect on the prisoners’ physical and psychological wellbeing.

One of the main things that struck me was that there were a lot of officers who genuinely wanted to help those in prison. There was almost a camaraderie between prisoners and staff. They all seemed to understand that people were often committing crimes just to survive. Many prisoners had been unable to defend themselves in court, or didn’t have the means. They did not know how to challenge the criminal justice system, or even how the process worked.

What did you get involved in there?

In the prisons there were opportunities for us to meet prisoners and share our own lived experiences and encourage them that none of us are defined by our past. This was particularly challenging in a completely different culture with often extreme barriers and no obligation on the government for support on release such as housing or a benefit system. Among the topics we discussed were preparing for re-integration into community, anger management and drug awareness. We shared tools to help with dealing with these issues. These conversations created a safe space for the prisoners to open up and be truly heard.

Did you feel you made a connection with those you met in the prison?

It is difficult to build connections in short doses as we visited multiple prisons. One of the main ways was by sharing personal stories and vulnerabilities so as to build connection through the emotions we have all experienced.

How was it working with Justice Defenders?

All of those I encountered made me feel welcome and looked after. I built some meaningful friendships that I will continue to build on.

What did you gain by going to Uganda?

It has opened my eyes to the fact that, although we have our own challenges within our country, we are extremely fortunate in comparison to others around the world. We should remember and appreciate that. It has helped me identify more clearly  that I want to be involved in social change/justice and that we are not limited to just our own community to do that. There are people in the world who need support and help and we are blessed here, able to go and make a real difference in others’ lives.

 

Our travelling scholarships are supported by the Henry Oldfield Trust. We will be sending two more scholars to Uganda in the summer of 2023.  Any past or present scholars interested in applying should contact our Employability Manager, Abi Andrews. 

 

Not just another brick in the wall

Author: | 18 May 2022

This week prisons and the justice system have been in the news. Firstly, a joint justice inspectors’ report found recovery from the pandemic at ‘unacceptable levels in some areas’, whilst education is too often neglected. Today, MPs have called for urgent action to strengthen people’s access to high-standard education whilst in prison.

Our Director Peter Stanford, who gave evidence to the House of Commons Committee has written for Longford Blog:

There are some pressing, damaging problems that face us as a society where readily achievable solutions are hard to find, or else hotly contested.  Thankfully, that is not the case when it comes to tackling the staggeringly high number of prisoners who reoffend within 12 months of release. Depending on which figures you use, the current rate is between 40 and 60%.  We know a good part of the answer.  So the only real question is why are we not acting on that knowledge.

Today’s report, Not just another brick in the wall: why prisoners need an education to climb the ladder of opportunity, from the Select Committee on Education on prison education once again confirms that a decent, well-funded education system in our prisons has enormous potential to change lives, cut reoffending, reduce the cost to the taxpayer of prisons, and make us all safer.  But this message is nothing new or surprising.

In 2015, for example, I was a member of the panel working under Dame Sally Coates on a report on prison education. We handed Unlocking Potential, our recommendations, to the then Secretary of State for Justice, Michael Gove, in 2016 and he promised, in public, to implement them ‘without hesitation, repetition or deviation’.

Yet, as the Select Committee’s report sets out, next to nothing has happened about the vast majority of Coates recommendations. So it makes them all over again.

Will it be different this time round?  Well, I have faith that, if you say something sensible often enough, eventually someone will listen.  I therefore agreed to appear before the committee in April 2021 to offer once again the perspective of the Longford Trust from its work supporting young serving and ex-prisoners to go to university.

At the end of my session, I was asked by the committee chair, Robert Halfon, what I would most like to see change.  At the risk of repeating myself, I said supervised internet access for serving prisoners so they can benefit from all the life-changing opportunities that distance learning with providers like the Open University offers.

And the Select Committee makes that one of their main recommendations. It also backs another long-standing wish of the Longford Trust – that student loans should be available not just to serving prisoners with six years or less to go on their tariff (the so-called Six-Year-Rule), but to all who can demonstrate that higher education studies would improve their prospect of rehabilitation.

On this second point, though, a junior minister at the Department for Education is reported as having told the Select Committee that the government did not want to give student loans to prisoners, ‘who have no prospect of paying those loans back’.

Does he think that prisoners never come out, never go on to use the educational qualifications they have undertaken while inside to get well-paid jobs?   More than 80 per cent of Longford Scholarship award-holders, all of whom receive student loans, do precisely that.

Evidently not, which dampens hopes that this Select Committee report will succeed where others before have failed in focussing minds on improving prison education. But we will continue unceasingly to argue the case because we know from experience that it is unanswerable.

Education changes lives for the better, in prison as everywhere else.

Peter Stanford

Introducing you to our new Longford Blog. Join a Big Conversation….

Author: | 25 Mar 2019

You get used to negative responses when you run a prison reform charity. Not always, of course, but on occasion I have had doors shut in my face when talking about the Longford Trust, what we do, and those we work with – shut metaphorically, I should add, in the sense of closed or hostile minds, rather than actually, in most cases.  The experience has been sufficient to give me some small insight into how much worse it must be when what is being shut out is not a charity but yourself, and your future. 

It happens for a whole variety of reasons, but principal among them is that the stereotypes surrounding people who’ve been to prison remain extremely hard to shift. These are stereotypes that deal in generalities rather than individuals, that play on fear rather than fact, that are informed by negative newspaper headlines and crowd-pleasing politicians rather than real people with real lives. 

At the Longford Trust, we have always been about people who have been to prison and are working really hard for a second chance. We try to understand – but not excuse – the many obstacles that stand in their way so that they can be overcome and best of all removed. By launching our new blog on the trust’s website, promoted on our Twitter feed and other social media, we want to extend that work further to give those we work with, our Longford Scholars, a platform to talk about what they are doing, how the world looks from where they are. What works, what doesn’t, and what needs to change. 

The trust’s starting point back in 2002 when we set up was a belief in the power of education to transform lives – something Frank Longford (in whose memory we were established) said throughout his long life on the political front-line, and on newspaper front pages. Over 70 years in the limelight, he also (usually quietly) visited prisoners. Frank Longford said many things but one in particular informs all we do. If you write off any individual’s capacity to reform and rehabilitate themselves, then you write off not just them, but yourself as well.  

So let’s stop doing something so damaging.  Let’s turn to this new platform for discussion about what taking on such a positive challenge means in practical terms. Let’s listen to those who know this pathway inside out, and want to support and encourage others to walk the same road. We hope to inspire those in prison or have been to prison, who might think university and a degree might not be for them, to look at others and think if it might actually be in their grasp. With the right support, could you do it? This Longford Blog offers a platform for scholars – occasionally mentors and other supporters as well- to air concerns and offer solutions about studying when you have been to prison, about ways to make the most of employment opportunities. Alongside the efforts of many others, up to and including some ministers, let’s keep pushing forward with making prison sentences a start not an end. 

If you really care about something and want to blog as part of a big conversation, please let us know. Email: office@longfordtrust.org

Peter Stanford

Director, Longford Trust