A Few Yearsago at Safe Groundwe Were Lucky Enough to Be Given a Small Grant by the Aldo
A few yearsago at Safe Groundwe were lucky enough to be given a small grant by the Aldo trust to be spent on educational resources for people in prison. We bought and distributed around 500 Oxford Mini School dictionaries to our Family Man and Fathers Insidegraduates and participants across the prison estate.
Today, needing a break from writing the Business Plan and designing a sustainable future for our work, I picked up the dictionary on my desk and flicked through. I found this:
relationshipNOUN1the way in which people or things are related2 the way in which people behave towards one another 3 an emotional or sexual association between two people.
This definition made me think about who decides how things are related?
Is my dad’s wife automatically my step-mum? Is my right to vote a right or a responsibility? Does my shopping at Primark really have any impact on the lives of people working in factories in Bangladesh?
My head is full of questions like these and I sometimes wonder if perhaps I would be more efficient if it weren’t.
And yet, my job is to ask questions like this all the time; of myself, my Board, the staff and, as a result of all that, of the people with whom we work in groups in prison and in a broad range of community settings.
What do relationships mean, how and why do we form them, look after them, value them, contribute to them, understand them and experience them? With whom do we have them, why and how do they break down, what do we do without them?
And today, with all the overwhelming awareness of the changes to the Criminal Justice System, its impact on the people involved and the whole reconfiguration of entire national structures like the Probation Service and the Prison Service, it occurs to me that, as my colleague Obinna says, “it’s all about relationships.”
Chris Grayling’s job is to ensure the Criminal Justice System is fit for purpose and fits within a budget. I am certain he believes his ideas, questions and approaches are absolutely correct. And they may well be; his risk is that they are not- and that risk is assumed by all of us.
The relationship between a political idea or agenda like Transforming Rehabilitationand a Family Man graduate(let’s call him ‘Sam’), may not be at once apparent. Sam often thinks there is no relationship at all- as doesour Cabinet minister responsible for the CJS, (let’s call him) ‘Kev’.
As far as Sam is concerned, Kev bears no relation to his life inside or outside or prison. Kev does not understand Sam’s concerns, isn’t interested in Sam’s complaints about the system and certainly doesn’t think Sam should be ‘benefitting’ from his time in prison. Sam imagines Kev thinks he and others convicted of crimes should be punished and reformed, taught to work and read and write and to ‘desist’ from crime.
Kev on the other hand, thinks Sam doesn’t understand his concerns at all and can have no conception of the conflicting priorities, multiple constraints and contradictory pressures on the Government. Kev thinks Sam needs help and must learn to better comply with the rules that are there to protect us all. Kev thinks Sam could avoid jail if he made different choices in life and that he can learn to do that if he is prepared to make the effort.
The relationship between Sam and Kev is critical.
Despite their divergent opinions, assumptions and ignorance of each other, Sam and Kev’s ideas and questions are absolutely fundamental to the way the system works, its efficiencies, impact, public value and purpose.
How can Kev and Sam ever relate to each other? Why should they? What difference would it make?
At Safe Ground we work with men in prison who are very clear about what they identify to be not only the failings, but the positive impacts of the current criminal justice system, its merits and positive attributes. We also work with many men for whom formal education has been a negative experience, for whom violence and abandonment have been the basis of primary relationships; and with many men whose educational, intellectual and analytical capacities are very well developed; and sometimes these characteristics all belong to the same man.
We also work very closely with many civil servants and policy makers, MPs and senior researchers; often equally engaged critical thinkers with many years of valuable experience and expertise in a range of related areas.
Whenever we can, Safe Ground brings these groups together, face to face, to talk. We encourage our graduates to write for sites like Works for Freedom (Jason Smith- Relationships can make the difference between prison and freedom, Works for Freedom) and we involve our alumni in the development of our work.
Does Sam understand why his probation officer is worried about being made redundant? Does Kev understand the nature of a life licence and Sam’s fear about starting a relationship with a new Probation Officer as someone who can be recalled to prison at any time?
Does Kev understand that for Sam, a GCSE is of absolutely no use at all during a prison sentence; Sam has 9 GCSEs, 3 A levels and a degree in Geography from Keele University.
Kev has never been into Sam’s prison. Sam has never been into the House of Commons. Sam has never voted, nor has he been a member of a political party or a Trade Union. Kev has never been in the armed forces, been excluded from school or slept in a park.
Sam understands Kev has a job to do. Kev understands Sam can change. Sam doesn’t understand why Kev can’t see him as a whole person with a life and a personality and a history before prison. Kev can’t understand how someone like Sam could get into a situation leading to a life sentence.
What use is a definition if in practice there is no relationship between the complexities of all human life and the cold, hard reality of economics and politics. Who decides which relationships are most important?
Sam? Kev? Me?