SAM’S STORY
The first thought that comes to mind when putting pen to paper for this opening blog is, ‘where have 6 months gone?’. To coin an old saying, starting the 100 & First Foundation has been a marathon, not a sprint. The slow, often painful grind that it takes to complete a marathon has been well and truly replicated. There have been, and continue to be, times where I sit at my desk and think ‘have we bitten off more than we can chew?’. The endless number of policies, the will we, won’t we get a bank account opened, the fact that no grant application is the same, the constant background noise of worry about funding and the fear that a global pandemic that continues to roll on, could derail our plans at any minute. Sometimes the relative safety and comfort of a steady income and working in an established organisation seems all too desirable. But then, I quickly recall a quote from Wayne Gretzky ‘you miss 100% of the shots you don’t take’, the 100 & First Foundation certainly started as a long shot, yet is quickly becoming one-shot that we are thankful we took. Most importantly, we hope that it is a shot that the people we work with are thankful we took.
This blog series is titled ‘Tales from Behind the Door’, a play on a phrase all too familiar on prison landings up and down the country. Its aim is to shed light on the lives of those we work within and out of prison. Documenting their struggles and successes and slowly reducing the societal prejudice that all offenders are bad people who have brought their struggles onto themselves.
Prison policy isn’t sexy, it doesn’t win votes. It’s all too easy to build more prisons, to lock them up, chuck away the key and forget about them. Passing the responsibility for them onto a few willing prison officers, our ‘hidden heroes’, who don’t get the respect from the society they deserve. Yet the problem of offending and often the repeat cycle that follows it, is a problem for all of us. Failing to address the needs of the people in our criminal justice system, often leaving it to chance whether or not someone will re-offend, has led to an ever-increasing pressure on our prison and probation system and public finances to boot. The combined economic and social cost of reoffending to society in 2018/19 was £18.1 billion, a sizeable chunk of cash that could be better served elsewhere. The average prison place costs us £40k per year, so even if we can help one person to make a change, we would be better off for it.
How to address this problem can be viewed through multiple different lenses; at home, in school, our communities and in our prisons. I am not qualified to enter fact into this argument, but what I can tell you is that I often find myself acting out in a way my significant others did when I was younger, luckily for me, those experiences were largely positive. But for many, they are not, for many the way they respond to pressures is not positive, but it probably came from somewhere. Having worked with people in prison for a relatively long time now, I commonly hear how experiences have shaped the choices people have made that led them to be in prison. Understanding this about myself has helped me to understand them a bit more. If anyone reading this is interested, I would highly recommend reading ‘the book you wish your parents had read’, it explains a lot.
So then, the people I have met in prison so far. Most have experienced more struggle than I thought possible. They often long for stability, a chance to do some good with their life and the connection and support of others. At 100 & First Foundation we aim to be that connection, we focus on ‘everything except the crime’. We take care of everything before and after that point, for example, the values we live by, the company we keep and the future we can create. We have a core belief that if a person can get these foundations right, then the natural by-product is that people have the opportunity to enjoy what they do, who they do it with and who they do it for. Through our projects, offenders are given the chance to explore what it is they are truly passionate about and a plan for how they can pursue it. They listen to powerful, real-life experiences that equip them with frameworks to build the necessary fortitude and resilience to go forward and share in the life of the community. Most of them are good people, with a strong moral compass guiding their choices; they just haven’t been nurtured in a way that enables them to express it yet. So if you ever get the chance to share the company of, spend time with or even consider employing an ex-offender, give them a chance, listen hard to what they are saying and maybe even give them the opportunity of a lifetime. You will probably grow as a result of it.
Next month we will hear from ‘Ash’, Ash spent time inside and has recently returned home to his family. Ash will give us an insight into life in prison, the struggle to maintain family ties during COVID and the three big lessons he learned during his time inside.
If anyone reading this would like to find out more, get involved, partner up or donate, please get in touch using the link below:
Sam Cload
Head of the 100 & First Foundation