Reducing Reoffending

[watervole]

I meant to link to this a week ago, but never got around to it.

It's an interesting article about the St Giles' Trust.  - a charity that helps newly released prisoners.

An independent study has shown that the prisoners they work with have a re-offending rate 40% lower than the national re-offending rate.

That's an impressive figure.   I sincerely hope that whatever government we end up with will support the work they do.

In the meantime, I'm off to make them a donation.

Comments

[elmyra.livejournal.com]

Well, if we end up with the Tories they'll support it by going "Great example of Big Society, keep doing what you're doing, no there's no money."

[vjezkova.livejournal.com]

At least you HAVE a trust for them...
ALL social work here is just...based on paperpushing...Sad.

[rockwell-666.livejournal.com]

I have long been an advocate of Restorative Justice whereby instead of the usual "tough on crime" nonsense which just attempts to reduce crime by locking offenders up for longer and longer periods, there is actually an attempt to show offenders that there's a human cost to their crimes and it has consistently shown positive results.

That, combined with the efforts of the St Giles' Trust could, I think, do a lot to really reduce the causes of crime.

Of course it wouldn't play well with the Daily Mail...

[watervole.livejournal.com]

I've heard of Restorative Justice and think it's an excellent scheme. I notice that it also reduces the stress to the victims, which is a non-trivial factor as well as the reduction in re-offending.

[undyingking.livejournal.com]

I think governments of all colours have been very short-sighted about investment in rehabilitation. It costs something like 40 grand a year to keep someone in prison, so it's crazy not to put money into schemes that reduce the likelihood of reoffending. Glad to see from that article that all parties are now committed to address it, but we shall see whether that actually happens or not.