Thursday 12 March 2015

For Labour, the Centre Cannot Hold

Originally published on the Huffington Post


The pledges of allegiance to the political center-ground made by Miliband and Balls in the weeks that followed Tony Blair's New Year's warning against a scenario where a "traditional left-wing party competes with a traditional right-wing party, with the traditional result", are a depressing reminder that the current Labour establishment has failed to escape the deep cynicism which lay at the heart of the New Labour project.
Blair and his successors are a political generation who grew up to believe that history was over. Neoliberalism had won and we were all Thatcherites whether we liked it or not. For better or worse, unfettered free-market capitalism was as inevitable as gravity. And so they did the responsible thing. Abandoned silly socialist fantasies and made grown up choices in a constrained context. Moved to the center-ground and forged a pragmatic compromise with the market.
They stood by as the wealth of the 1% ballooned and the incomes of the bottom half stagnated. Constantly reassuring themselves that neoliberal architecture with a bit of progressive window-dressing was the best deal in town. Over time, this political strategy has fossilized into a brittle and bankrupt philosophy, ill suited to the current reality.
Centre-ground Labour's policy agenda is to be not quite a bad as the Tories, while squatting on the possibility of genuine progressive alternatives. They shrug along to a succession of Tory cuts in order to earn their center-ground credibility, and in doing so ensure that - regardless of who's in charge - by 2017 Britain will be a scrooge state, with the lowest share of public spending of any major capitalist economy.
The left has been lumbered with a class of politicians who have forgotten what it is to dream. And at the most basic level progressive politics is founded on dreams. In 1945, Beverage dreamt of ridding society of squalor, ignorance, want, idleness, and disease. It was a mad dream, threatening the vested interests of an establishment that poured every ounce of their power and influence into making the status quo seem as inevitable as gravity. But millions of people woke up and saw that this dream had the power to make so many of their ordinary little dreams for their families and communities come true. Once dreamed it was too beautiful to stop.
The danger for Labour is that it has lost touch with a public that hasn't stopped dreaming. On a whole host of issues from taxation to housing and nationalization, polls have shown that since 2008 the majority of the British public has lurched to the left of the Labour party. People dream of a society that invests in real, productive employment for the public-good. A society where workers are paid a wage that allows their families to live in comfort. A society where everyone has a decent home. A society where those who have benefited most are required to contribute a fair share. Where corporations who take advantage of our infrastructure and human capital are made to pay their way. They dream of a kinder, more compassionate nation. A state run for the citizen.
Dreams like these almost caused an earthquake in Scotland, where 1.6 million people were energised by the prospect of a real alternative. Of freeing their economy from the city and making it work for society; driving a green industrial revolution and striving towards full employment. The lasting power of that dream has decimated Labour's standing north of the border.
Similar dreams have led to a surge in Green party's membership; opening up another vote draining front on Labour from the left. Internationally, radical dreamers in Greece and Spain are staging democratic revolutions, which pose an existential threat to neoliberal hegemony in Europe. We are living in interesting times and unless it is careful, the Labour leadership could find a centre-ground propped up by the begrudged votes of an electorate with bigger dreams collapsing beneath its feet.
And on an even more basic level, Blair's cynical assertion that he knows what is to come from what has been before shows that he doesn't really understand how time works. History isn't over. This moment in time isn't 1997. It isn't 1945 either. It's not even 2010. This moment will give way to the next. Change, for better or worse, is inevitable. But we can choose how we make that journey. We can be dragged along by the status quo and become a meaner, more divided society, or we can be pulled up by our dreams.

Wednesday 12 March 2014

Too many Gypsies and Travellers end up in prison – this must be addressed

report released yesterday by HM Inspectorate of Prisons revealed that around 5% of prisoners in England and Wales consider themselves to be Gypsy, Romany or Traveller: the same proportion of the prison estate made up by women prisoners. Given that only 0.1% of respondents to the 2011 census in England and Wales identified themselves as "Gypsy or Irish Traveller", this is a huge over-representation.
Huge, but sadly unsurprising. Imprisonment is the purest form of social exclusion and there is a depressing array of statistics to support the case for Gypsies and Travellers being among the most excluded groups in British society. Life expectancy is 12 years below the national average, infant mortality is higher than for any other group, illiteracy rates are off the scale and 60% of Gypsies and Travellers have no formal qualifications.
In my work with Travellers in prison, I've seen firsthand the crippling effects of illiteracy and innumeracy on community members. The inability to obtain health and safety certification, pass a driving theory test or complete an invoice means many Travellers are now excluded even from traditional manual occupations and are pushed into the illegal economy.
On numerous occasions I've spoken to frustrated probation officers who have had to recommend custody rather than a community sentence in pre-sentence reports because the Traveller offender in question lacked the literacy level needed to enrol on an offender behaviour course in the community.
In 2011, recognising the high social cost of low educational outcomes in Gypsy and Traveller communities, the coalition government made a commitment to highlight Gypsies and Travellers as a vulnerable group in a revised Ofsted framework. However, when the revised framework was released in 2012 it made no mention of Gypsies and Travellers.
Meanwhile, coalition cuts have resulted in specialist Traveller education services being drastically reduced or abolished and, according to Linda Lewins, president of the National Association of Teachers of Travellers, "20 years of hard work being pulled apart".
The government's broken promises on Traveller education are bad not just for Gypsies and Travellers but for society as a whole. At a rough estimate, keeping 4,200 Gypsies and Travellers in prison is costing the country £168m a year. Given the firmly established links between poor educational outcomes and offending, urgent investment in Traveller education should just be common-sense economics.
There is also much work to be done inside prisons to reduce reoffending. The inspectorate's report found that a smaller proportion of Gypsy and Traveller prisoners had prison jobs or were engaged in training or education than non-Traveller prisoners, while a larger proportion were held in segregation units.
Prisons are currently ill-equipped to provide prisoners who lack basic literacy and numeracy with the intensive support they require to make progress. Although a few, such as HMP Ford, have successfully used embedded support workers and peer support to improve access to education, this is the exception rather than the rule.
Tackling educational disadvantage is a vital step towards tackling the over-representation of Gypsies and Travellers in the justice system. But it isn't a panacea.
Beyond the measurable outcomes of disadvantage, we also need to acknowledge the insidious effects of widely accepted prejudice and discrimination on offending behaviour. According to Trevor Phillips, former chair of the Equality and Human Rights Commission, for Gypsies and Travellers "Great Britain is still like the American Deep South for black people in the 1950s. Extreme levels of public hostility exist … fuelled in part by irresponsible media reporting of the kind that would be met with outrage if it was targeted at any other ethnic group."
A few months ago I was talking to an Irish Traveller prisoner in the West Midlands. He reeled off accounts of bullying at school, of being moved on time and time again, of police harassment and discrimination in the labour market. "Settled people hate us," was his simple conclusion. "They don't respect me, so why should I respect them?"
Is he right? Does exclusion and discrimination excuse his criminality? No. And he didn't speak for the majority of law-abiding Gypsies and Travellers. But his bitter cynicism revealed that for him at least, the social contract was broken.
As a society we pay a high price for telling an entire community that they are not wanted.

Tuesday 24 September 2013

A real solution to the ‘blight’ of unauthorised Traveller sites

Originally published in The Guardian and LSE Politics and Policy Blog
Eric Pickles call for councils to tackle the ‘blight’ of unauthorised Traveller sites was met with outcry recently, with community leaders claiming the Communities Secretary’s words fanned the flames of anti-Traveller prejudice. But in a way, Pickles has a point. The dire shortage of legal Traveller sites in England is a blight on our society, fuelling social-exclusion and contributing to appalling health and educational outcomes for Gypsy and Traveller communities. Sky high rates of infant mortality, low life expectancy and high illiteracy are direct results of the cycles of eviction and homelessness which leave many Travellers unable to access basic services.
The overwhelming majority of Travellers in the UK want to live on authorised sites that are subject to the same council tax as house dwellers and provided with the same services. They are prevented from realising this basic aspiration by a planning system which relentlessly mitigates against the community.
In a marvellous piece of double speak, Pickles recently announced he was revoking the 2005 ‘Equality and Diversity in Planning’ guidance in order to ensure ‘fair play’ and stop ‘special treatment’ for Travellers. This is a staggering statement in a context where 90% of planning applications submitted by Gypsies and Travellers are rejected, compared to only 20% of applications from the general population.
The majority of these applications fail due to local opposition at the consultation stage, which often boils down to media-fuelled cultural misunderstanding and prejudice. Most private and council run sites in the UK are well managed and pose no problems to the wider community; indeed, local residents are often completely unaware of authorised Traveller sites in their area. Examples of Travellers living in harmony with the settled community are abundant but rarely make headlines. Meanwhile, at the first hint of a planning application for a new Traveller site local newspapers stoke up fears of anti-social behaviour and falling house prices.
A 2012 Ministerial Working Group report, tackling inequalities experienced by Gypsies and Travellers - chaired by none other than Pickles himself – acknowledged the problem of local opposition to legal sites and made a commitment to showcase existing, well run Traveller sites, to counteract the fears and misconceptions of the settled community. The government also promised to produce ‘a case study document which local authorities and councillors, potential site residents and the general public could use’ to support the case for local site provision.
Eighteen months on and the government has failed to deliver on even these very modest pledges. Instead, we got ‘Dealing with illegal and unauthorised encampments’; the Department for Communities and Local Government guidance document which warranted the recent press release and TV spots. Why this document needed any press at all is puzzling, given the fact that it turned out to be a ten page copy-and-paste job, rehashing the existing legislation on unauthorised Traveller sites. This seems to have little to do with policy and everything to do with dog-whistle, minority-bashing politics.
Cheering on evictions might be a cheap Tory vote winner, but in the real world they are not a solution. When homeless Traveller families are moved on from one place they don’t just vanish into thin air; rather the problem is shifted to another county or borough. This is costly to us all; both in terms of the expense of repeat evictions and in the huge social costs attached to banishing a community to the margins of our society.
If we want to solve the ‘blight’ of unauthorised Traveller sites there is only one solution; adequate authorised sites. The scale of this solution is achievable even within the current economic context. Four thousand additional pitches are required; less than one square mile across the whole country. But to achieve this proactive policy strong leadership is needed in the face of lowest common denominator anti-Traveller NIMBYism.

Monday 24 June 2013

How Much Do We Really Care About Care?

Originally published in the Huffington Post
Last Thursday the BBC released a video of 83-year-old Muriel Price, sobbing pitiful protests to an empty house as she lay stranded in her bed, her agency carer having failed to turn up to work. Her quiet desperation painted a shameful picture of how little our society values the elderly and vulnerable.
I found it hard to watch Muriel's video, but wasn't remotely surprised by the content. Just as with other recent care scandals in the UK, the pattern of failure and neglect was all too familiar to me.

I stumbled into agency care work as a 19-year-old looking for employment that required neither qualifications nor experience. After two days of basic food hygiene and health and safety training I was sent to out support young adults with learning difficulties in day centres and residential homes for £5 an hour. I was utterly unprepared for the demanding work. Some of my clients had extreme behavioural difficulties; no one had told me what I should do when a charge of the same body mass as me bit an old woman in a shopping centre for example, or kicked children in a playground.
There was also little support; often I'd be left bathing, changing and moving clients alone, when for safety reasons these should have been two-person jobs. This was backbreaking work for me, and often humiliating for the person being cared for. Then there would be the times at the end of an exhausting 7am - 3pm shift when my manager would call and inform me he hadn't managed to find cover for the afternoon and I'd have to do a 'double' sixteen hour day.
Although most of my colleagues were diligent and genuinely caring, I regularly witnessed malpractice. In one care home, waking night staff would tie emergency alarm cords out of reach of disabled residents, leaving them crying impotently for help in the night as the staff would catch up on sleep. I saw teenagers with learning difficulties locking in rooms for hours to 'cool down', by staff who'd had no training to deal with their complex needs.
Then there was the casual neglect. I'd regularly come on shift to find that an incontinent client had not been changed in the preceding eight hours, or incapacitated clients who should have been up, washed and dressed had instead been left in bed while their carers watched TV.
To my great shame as an awkward 19 year old I never spoke up or reported wrongdoing. I did the best I could and kept my head down. I also saw the futility of complaining about individuals; this wasn't about a few bad eggs, it was a systematic problem. We were all undertrained, underpaid and overstressed. I knew that colleagues who were negligent were also exhausted by erratic shift patterns, long commutes between different jobs and the usual stresses of trying to feed their families below the poverty line.
As frontline workers, we were also in the firing line for the failings of more senior staff; either our own managers or thinly spread social-workers. If something did go wrong or if our company lost contracts we knew that as agency workers we could be sacked at a moments notice.
The net result of all this was a sense that our work was unimportant. To many, care work was just another insecure stop on a merry-go-round of crap, poorly paid jobs and occasional spells on the dole.
It shouldn't be like this.
Caring isn't just another job; it is a vital component of a civilised society. The justifiable public outrage at widespread substandard care is testament to this. And despite all the stress, the antisocial hours, the lack of training or support and the rubbish pay, in many ways I loved my job. I got a buzz from enabling people to lead fuller lives than their circumstances would otherwise allow. At times the work could be genuinely rewarding and even fun. I'd go home drained, but feeling far more fulfilled than I had in the mind numbing call centre job I had paid my rent with up till then. Caring should be a vocation, but the current framework denies workers the support and security to make this possible.
Norman Lamb MP, Minister for Care and Support, has recently called for recommendations on how to reform the care system, stating the need for sweeping change. This is encouraging, but really the recipe for reform is very simple and is already working in other countries. 

A few years ago I met a Swedish woman who had recently qualified as a care worker after two years of formal training. She was on a decent salary and was employed directly by the state on a permanent contract. She also had opportunities for further training and education to develop her career in the sector. She felt valued and supported and consequently took her job very seriously.
In Sweden, caring is a profession. In the UK it's a dead end.
The neglect experienced by Muriel Price was not inflicted by one lazy carer; it is systemic neglect which implicates our priorities as a society. If we take the care of our most vulnerable seriously we need to invest in carers, giving them the tools and support to do their job properly and pay which reflects the demands of their vital work.

Thursday 25 April 2013

Osborne's GAAR is good news for Tory donors

George Osborne's budget day threat, that the government will no longer let tax avoiders 'get away with it' is unlikely to leave many quaking in their boots.

The coalition launched a consultation on the development of a General Anti-Avoidance Rule (GAAR) to tackle tax avoidance back in 2010. In the intervening years, fears that a broad-spectrum GAAR might 'erode the attractiveness of the UK's tax regime' and undermine 'sensible and responsible tax planning' have resulted in the government plumping instead for a watered down 'General Anti-Abuse Rule'.

The anti-abuse rule, announced with much fanfare by George Osborne, will target only the most flagrant 'artificial and abusive' arrangements, leaving the 'centre ground' of tax planning untouched. The charity War on Want have called Osborne's measure a 'cosmetic response to public anger, which will do very little to stop tax avoidance', while the Association of Revenue and Customs, which represents professionals at HMRC, fear that the vague definition and narrow focus of the rule may in fact 'widen perceptions of what is responsible tax planning and so make it harder to tackle tax avoidance'.

Osborne doesn't have to look far to see the scale of lost tax revenue through legal 'tax-planning'. He could for instance look at the Conservative Party's Millbank Tower landlords, David and Simon Reuben.

The Reuben brothers hold second place in the Forbes list of richest Britons, with a net worth of $10.5bn. They are long-time friends of the Conservatives, donating at least £563,290 to the party since 2006 via a spider's web of companies. The biggest donor was 'Investors in Private Capital Ltd' which has coughed up £379,900 over the past five years. Investors in Private Capital has a net worth of £122,251,000, and turned over £37,062,000 in 2011/12. Despite this, it paid zero corporation tax.

Then there is Global Switch, the Reuben's globe-spanning data centre company, which has former Conservative leader Michael Howard as a director. Global Switch and its subsidiaries, Global Switch Estates 1 and Global Switch Estates 2, have a collective net worth of £479,442,000 and turned over £133,435,000 in 2011/12, but didn't pay a penny in corporation tax.

Other key Reuben Brothers' companies such as Northern Racing, (which again has Michael Howard cropping up as chairman), and Kirkglade Ltd have also managed not to pay any corporation tax, despite multi-million pound turnovers.

How can this be? In the case of Global Switch, tens of millions of pounds of taxable profit vanishes from the balance sheets via huge loan interest payments to a fellow subsidiary undertaking based in the British Virgin Islands. A similar process occurs with Investors in Private Capital, with millions of pounds of interest paid to 'TFB Mortgages Ltd'; a Reuben Brothers' company registered in Ireland, with a British Virgin Islands parent company.

As a result of these 'tax-efficient' intragroup transactions, the Reuben Brothers completely legally get out of paying millions of pounds of corporation tax. Their arrangements- and similar ones used by thousands of other rich individuals and companies in the UK- will almost certainly fall under the provision for 'established practice' in the new anti-abuse rule.

Tax Research UK estimate that the UK loses £25 billion a year in tax avoidance. This is revenue which could prevent further hardship for the millions of working families already struggling under austerity, and facing welfare cuts of £18 billion a year by 2015.

Osborne's softly-softly approach to tax avoidance is more evidence if it where needed that the coalition is a government of the rich, for the rich, to the detriment of the rest of society.

But at least the Tory's friends will still have a few spare quid for political donations.

Thursday 14 March 2013

The Money Men Behind the 'Dinner Party Plot'

Originally  published on Left Foot Forward

Last Thursday The Times ran a juicy exclusive, revealing a dinner party "plot" by right-wing Tories, including Chris Grayling, David Davis, Liam Fox and John Redwood, to put pressure on the government to hold an EU referendum before the 2015 general election.

There was nothing especially surprising about this news; indeed, in October of last year the writer Frederick Forsyth made it clear that a £5000 contribution to Liam Fox for "staffing and running of private office" was to be used specifically for exerting such pressure. Explaining his donation in the Express, Forsyth stated that;

Liam Fox, with others, wishes to create a unified and formidable pressure group to try to persuade the party to cease dithering on a very major issue: do we get referendum on our future, in or outside the European Union that we have been denied for too long?

There is nothing dishonourable or disloyal in the pressure group. Politics is rife with them and various opinions seek perfectly reasonably to promote their point of view. Other groups, desperate to deny us that referendum, exist and are copiously funded.

Since Forsyth's donation, others have stepped up to Fox's plate, donating a total of £27,200 to the back bencher's private office in the last six months. 

Among them are some familiar faces; 'Investors in Private Capital', part of the Reuben brothers "tax-efficient web of predominantly offshore companies”, coughed up £10,000. The Reuben brothers previously funded Fox's private office when he was shadow defence secretary, and over the past decade have donated hundreds of thousands of pounds to the Tories via six different companies.

Mining magnate and highest paid executive in the FTSE 100 Mick Davis stumped up a further £7,200 for Fox's private office. That's the same Mick Davis who helped bankroll Fox's chum Adam Werritty.

While Werritty and his Atlantic Bridge 'charity' may have met an untimely demise, it's cheering to see that figures such as Davis, who facilitated their neoconservative efforts, have not lost heart, and continue to plough cash into the most reactionary elements of the Tory party.

Sunday 3 March 2013

Transforming Rehabilitation Will Take More Than Mentors


Originally published on the Huffington Post
The coalition government is promising 'a revolution in the way we manage offenders' with a radical overhaul of post-release provision designed to drive down the rate of reoffending.
The revolving door of recidivism, which sees almost half of those released from prison reoffending within 12 months, is an expense society can little afford and any attempt to address the crisis should be welcomed.
Key to the government's proposals set out in 'Transforming Rehabilitation', released last month, is the outsourcing of the majority of rehabilitation work to be delivered by the private and voluntary sector organisations. The government says it wants these new providers to tackle the root causes of reoffending;
Providing mentors and signposting to services aimed at employment, accommodation, training and tackling addiction, to help offenders turn their lives around. We will encourage providers to harness local expertise through working with local and specialist voluntary and community sector (VCS) organisations.
Having worked in the community sector, meeting offenders at the prison gate and supporting them as they reintegrate into society, I have seen first hand the value of this work and welcome any additional support to ex-offenders. In particular, the government's proposal to extend provision to those finishing short sentences- who have the highest reconviction rates but currently get no support on release- is vital and long overdue.
But I am sceptical that mentoring and signposting alone can tackle the causes of reoffending. In the course of my own mentoring work, I've often been left frustrated and angry by the institutional hurdles that block offenders' progress. Indeed, at times I've felt just as 'lost in the system' as the people I'm trying to help.
For illustrative purposes I'd like to share 'Adam's' story:
I first met Adam in a London prison in 2011. He was coming to the end of long sentence for violent crime but rather than looking forward to his release he was sick with worry. Adam's background was far from atypical; his mother was an alcoholic and he had spent most of his childhood in care. By his late teens he'd been diagnosed with bipolar disorder and had picked up a heroin addiction which meant he was only ever out of prison for a couple of months at a time. By the age of forty he had spent more than half of his life locked up.
After maintaining on Subutex for two years in prison, Adam was desperate to sort his life out on release and eventually enter rehab. With no home to go to however, Adam was afraid he'd end up in a hostel with other drug users, fall back into his old chaotic lifestyle and wind up back in prison. After much negotiating with Adam's probation officer, it was agreed that on release he would be transferred outside the London area to live with his sister in Cornwall. This was a brilliant outcome which would mean Adam would be in a better environment to address his addiction and begin rebuilding his life.
And this is where Adam's rehabilitation saga began.
Two days before Adam was due to be released a decision was made by the local police and probation service in Cornwall that he was too high risk to be released to their area and the transfer request was refused. This meant that Adam would be released to his old stomping ground in Lambeth and last minute accommodation would have to be found. On the day he was released Adam was told to sign a six-month contract for a private-rented bedsit he hadn't even seen. Had he not done so, he would have been left homeless for the night and in breach of his licence due to having no address.
The bedsit turned out to be a filthy box room in a small Victorian terraced house that had been converted into a multi-occupancy-dwelling of six flats. The other residents were of a similar background to Adam; ex-offenders and addicts, living there as other private landlords wouldn't have touched them with a bargepole. On the first day Adam found used needles on the communal stairs and a fortnight later his door was kicked in while he was at the shops and his meagre possessions looted.
Registering with a surgery on release, Adam's new doctor disputed the medication he had been prescribed in prison for his bipolar disorder and his already stressed state was made worse by the withdrawal of drugs he had become dependent on. Worse, he had to wait a month before finally being referred to the Community Mental Health Team he had been told would be working with him as soon as he got out of prison.
Any time he stepped out of the front door Adam was liable to bump into an old friend or foe. He'd grown up in Lambeth, it was where he'd committed his crimes and scored his heroin and the temptation to throw in the towel and drift back into the chaos was ever present.
As Adam's support worker I repeatedly told his probation officer that Adam was doomed to fail in this context but with a six months contract signed there was no way for him to move without losing the tenancy deposit that had been paid for with a crisis loan. Without getting the deposit back he'd have no way of securing another tenancy.
But I was wrong about Adam. He didn't reoffend and he didn't relapse and despite bouts of despair and frustration he kept his head down and the weeks ticked by. On one occasion he and his girlfriend were viciously attacked in the street by an old associate, resulting in his girlfriend's hospitalisation. Still, Adam resisted the temptation to retaliate and left the matter to the police.
As the end of Adam's tenancy approached I worked hard with his probation officer to get him moved out of the area. After much negotiating it was agreed that having demonstrated good behaviour for six months, Adam would be allowed to transfer his licence to Southampton, where he had some family, and make a fresh start there.
Then, the night before the move with everything arranged I got a call from Adam's probation officer. She told me that the transfer, which she had assumed was a fait accompli, had been refused by Southampton probation. She was at a loss as to why, as Adam was no longer classified as high risk, but the decision was final. I was stumped. The deposit had already been paid to the new landlord in Southampton and Adam had to be out of his current flat the next morning; new residents were due to move in. No longer was this a case of a deposit being lost; Adam would be left on the streets if he couldn't move to Southampton. I said all this to Adam's probation officer and asked what he should do; he had no alternate accommodation in London; where was he going to go tomorrow? She had no answers and confirmed that if Adam went to Southampton he'd be in breach of his licence and would be recalled. If he stayed, homeless, in London he'd be in breach due to being 'intentionally homeless' with no address and would also be recalled to prison.
I felt sick as I hung up the phone. Through my interfering I'd made matters worse for Adam than if I'd just left him where he was. When I called Adam he was wretched with despair. He was going back to prison. There had been no point him even trying.
Not knowing what to do I called Adam's probation officer back and asked to speak to her manager; desperately demanding that this just could not be right. How could a man who had done everything possible to stay on track be returned to prison through no fault of his own?
Finally, on the morning of the move the probation reached a compromise. Adam would be allowed to move to Southampton and be supervised by local probation officers but would remain the responsibility of Lambeth probation. My relief was indescribable.
Things haven't been plain sailing for Adam since the move; there were again complications with his medication and difficulties with his new landlord. Having been out of prison for over a year though, Adam's prospects of living a normal life on the right side of the law look good.
I'm sharing Adam's story because it contains many of the all too common crisis points that can trip up ex-offenders. Nothing that happened to Adam was unusual; what was unusual was that he stuck it out. With the majority of offenders I've worked with it's only taken one cock-up in the crucial first few months post-release to lead to a recall to prison.
As the government's report rightly points out, many offenders have led chaotic lives marked by abuse, institutional care, substance misuse and mental illness. When troubled and chaotic people are released into a bureaucratic rehabilitation system which at times can seem equally as chaotic, individual's chances of success are slim.
And while the focus on changing the behaviour of offenders in 'transforming rehabilitation' is important, equally important is tackling the criminogenic pressures created by environments blighted by poverty, substance misuse and violence. Real investment is the only thing that can change these environments. You can't signpost people to decent housing, services and jobs if they don't exist.
Mentors can only work if the system they help offenders navigate works. Support and guidance are of limited use if the fundamentals of safe housing, uninterrupted medical care and logical case planning are missing.