The road to redemption: Does the rehabilitation of prisoners work?

When he was Conservative Home Secretary, Michael Howard famously told us that "prison works". His remarks were ridiculed by the opposition Labour Party, who pointed to high levels of reoffending by those recently released from jail. But, after 10 years in government, New Labour seems just as attached as Howard was to this flawed mantra.

And so it locks more and more people away for longer and longer – with 81,597 inmates currently behind bars, we are now the runaway leaders in the European league for incarceration. Yet, still, reoffending is at record levels. Among over-21s, 58 per cent have ended up in trouble with the law within two years of their release. In the 18-21 age group, that rises to 78 per cent

Even Labour doesn't appear to believe any more in the logic of its own policy. For, if prison works, those who have served their sentences should, in theory, be ready to take their places back in society. Yet when they near their court-allocated release date – as Learco Chindamo, killer of the headmaster Philip Lawrence, has discovered this week – prisoners find that all their efforts at rehabilitation seem to count for nothing. The obstacles in their path remain formidable. The Government seems to want their punishment – or at least their demonisation – to continue. In Chindamo's case, they want to deport him to a country where he has not lived since he was five.

The reaction to Chindamo's case highlights the reasons behind the double-thinking in our attitudes to rehabilitation. He has served his sentence and is reported to have made good progress. If ever there was an example of prison working, surely this is it. Instead of applauding this, there is public outrage that the courts are daring to stand in the way of the Government's desire to deport him. The popular prejudice about prisoners remains stuck in Dickensian times – they are a bad lot and always will be and should be treated as such. In other words, prison doesn't work.

The trouble with this debate is that most people on either side of it have made up their minds what they believe, rather than actually engaging with the reality inside prisons. But, for those who actually do, it's impossible to avoid the conclusion that if every prisoner is not to remain in jail for ever, rehabilitation is essential.

Not only that, but the evidence shows that it can work, as in the case of Bob Turney, who spent 30 years shuttling in and out of prison before finally finding the support and help necessary to become a positive rather than a negative force in society, as his story overleaf makes clear.

Nor is he the only example of the value of rehabilitation programmes. I recently visited Brixton Prison in south London. It's a typical inner-city jail, built in Victorian times, stuffed to the rafters with people, many of them young, many of them on remand. Conventional wisdom assumes that the inmates were all simply so bad that they had made a calculated decision to risk a long jail sentence by carrying out criminal activity.

The reality is very different. The governor of the prison had done a survey and found that around three-quarters of those in his care had been excluded from school as youngsters, or had come from broken homes, or had mental health problems, or had got involved in drugs, or were functionally illiterate. Or all of these. Seen in such a context, their offending behaviour becomes more understandable – if still not acceptable.

If we were to think through our very reasonable desire to lessen our chances of being victims of crime, we might conclude that instead of spending tax-payers' money on providing more and more prison places – it costs an estimated £60,000 per year to keep each inmate locked up – there is a strong case for redirecting that money towards ensuring that prisoners do not reoffend on the "outside".

To be fair to New Labour, there has been, alongside the headline " longer sentences and more prison places" policy, another much less publicised approach. In 2001, for instance, the Government invested an extra £55m in the prison education system, ensuring that all prisons now have a designated head of learning and skills to promote rehabilitation. The head of the Prison Service at the time, Martin Neary, said that he wanted to ensure that every 16- to 18-year-old in his care had the same provision for education as their contemporaries on the outside – provoking the usual complaints about prison being a holiday camp.

In our grim and decidedly un-Butlins-like city jails, where the turnover of inmates is high, education programmes remain basic. But around the country, in the longer-term institutions, there are now many outstanding examples of good practice surviving and even thriving thanks to the dedication of the staff and enlightened Home Office support.

That so much has been accomplished when our prisons are full to bursting, and when inmates regularly have to be moved around the system, disrupting their education, is quite an achievement. Again, it's not one you read about often.

Once inside, many youngsters do indeed undertake precisely the sort of reflection on past misdemeanours that their sentence is intended to encourage. Many – especially once they reach their mid-twenties and realise that a life of going in and out of jail is no sort of life at all – identify education as the way to break the cycle. There is a variety of programmes to help them make up for lost time, from basic literacy, and courses that address the causes behind offending behaviour, to arts projects that bring theatre, music and radio production behind bars and unlock hitherto unsuspected potential.

Again, there has been new government money to encourage those inmates who want to take Open University degrees while serving their sentences, some of it channelled through the Prisoners' Education Trust. Many open prisons, for example, have forged links with local further and higher education colleges and allow their inmates to attend lectures and tutorials with few restrictions. It is enlightened and positive and has been shown to produce positive results.

When prisoners come up for parole, their progress in education, self-improvement and repentance is closely examined and rewarded – as it should be in a system that claims that "prison works". But it is at this point that the Government's dual agendas come into conflict.

I work on a small programme that, financially and emotionally, supports young ex-offenders who have managed, while inside, to accumulate enough educational qualifications to go on to university. We recently agreed to back a young woman who had a place to study law. The Parole Board emphasised how impressed it was by this when it granted her early release. Yet the minute she stepped outside the prison gates, she was detained on the orders of the Home Secretary and told she was going to be deported. She was, you see, a European national and satisfying public demand that all "foreign" prisoners be chucked out of the country was much more important than recognising everything she had achieved while in prison.

And if the Government is not prepared to recognise the fruits of its own investment in rehabilitation work inside prisons, then the public is ever more reluctant to do so in the current climate. Two of the students we are working with had their offers of places at renowned higher education establishments withdrawn at the last minute, despite the fact that they had made full disclosure of their criminal records in their initial applications. "We don't want your sort here," was the very clear message they were given. They could have appealed, but why force themselves on a place that so obviously didn't want them?

Another was given a place at one of London's most prestigious colleges, but was then told that the promise of university accommodation made to all freshers didn't apply to him because he had a criminal record and therefore couldn't be trusted. It hardly counts as a warm welcome back into society, or encouragement to stay on the straight and narrow. They are small examples, but they point to a deeper prejudice against any hint of allowing ex-prisoners to earn the right to put their past behind them.

Which brings us to forgiveness. It is, as Frances Lawrence admitted this week, an extremely difficult concept to embrace. Those who haven't been challenged to do it should preach it with care. Often it is written off as something only those with a strong religious belief can do – like Gee Walker, an evangelical Christian and the mother of the murdered Liverpool teenager Anthony Walker, struck down with an axe in a racist killing.

But forgiveness doesn't have to be pigeonholed as a religious impulse. That leaves the rest of us free to continue with our prejudices. Forgiveness can be selfish, too – selfish in the sense that letting go of the anger and hatred against someone who has offended against you can be, to judge from the testimonies gathered by the campaigning organisation the Forgiveness Project, healing and renewing. And selfish in that it is much more likely to encourage those who have offended to feel part of society once more when released, and therefore to do what we so desperately want them to do – not reoffend.

Peter Stanford is the director of the Longford Trust

Rebellion to rehab: Bob Turney's story

"I come from a dysfunctional family: my father was a manic depressive and there were always suicide attempts going on – my mum was more bothered about keeping my father alive then me failing at school. I fell through the education system. I'm profoundly dyslexic and have a reading age of a child of eight.

"I'm 63 now, but when I left school at 15 I couldn't read or write, and my brother was involved in illegal gambling and was on the fringes of organised crime. I just drifted into crime. My brother introduced me to the people he knew. I was so impressed by them – they had money and good cars and I wanted to be like them.

"I became a burglar, breaking into houses and stealing whatever I could, mainly anything electrical. Colour televisions had just come in, and we were stealing them to order. We even had an after-sales service. If you crossed the television engineer's palm with a few quid he would go round and repair them. We were earning about £1,000 a week, which was a lot of money then. It still is. It either went down my throat or up my nose. I was smoking heroin, and took amphetamines, cocaine, anything.

"One time, armed with pick-axe handles, we robbed someone who was coming into a bank to deposit some money. Violence was part of our lives: we were involved in brawls, fights in pubs, revenge beatings and gang feuds. If another gang stepped into our territory we would go and sort them out. We would go in a pub and start fighting them with whatever came to hand, including hammers, bars or baseball bats.

"I was first caught for auto theft, and placed on probation. Within a year I had broken it, fighting in a pub when I was drunk, and was sent to my first young offenders' institution at the age of 16. I was there for about three months. It was horrendous, but I got used it to. Then I went into the adult system.

"I spent about 18 years going in and out of jail and became very institutionalised. My longest stretch was about three-and-a-half years. Most of my convictions were for burglary; a couple of times I was done for assaulting a police officer when I was drunk.

"Prison became my life. What was going on in the outside world wasn't happening to me as far as I was concerned. Once I was released from Pentonville at 7.30 one morning, and was back by four in the afternoon the next day, having been re-arrested as I tried to break into a car while drunk.

"Prison offered me a lot of security. It gave me boundaries that I had never had. In Wandsworth we were locked up on our own, 24/7, most of the time. It was like being looked after. I couldn't cope on the outside. I was happier inside by far. It didn't matter if I committed and got done: I was quite relieved, actually. I felt safe because I knew I was killing myself on the outside with drugs.

"As my alcohol- and drug-dependency increased I went more and more downhill. I ended up sleeping on the streets and tried to commit suicide. In 1980 I was admitted to a psychiatric hospital for three months and then on to a rehabilitation centre.

"Things started to improve from then. There were a lot of issues in my life that the rehabilitation centre helped me to address. Then I was placed in a halfway hostel, and afterwards got my own place. I was sick and tired of the life I had been leading and started to get jobs on building sites to pay the rent. I attended a lot of self-help groups and got support with my drinking and drugging.

"The support motivated me to change my life. I knew I wanted to change, but I hadn't had the incentives before. I didn't want to sleep on park benches any more, or in derelict houses. I didn't want to return to my previous habits.

"I started doing voluntary work with people with drink issues and drug problems, and met my now wife, Sue. She was entirely different to me – middle class, really educated, very attractive and very witty. She was a great inspiration to me, and continues to be one. We've got five kids now.

"I worked as a volunteer for my local probation service. One day a probation officer suggested that I should think about becoming one. I thought he was on crack, to be quite honest. I had a criminal record that makes the Artful Dodger look like a choirboy and I can't read or write. I started working in the service in 1989, and got a degree in forensic social work from Reading University. I wrote an autobiography, I'm Still Standing, after meeting Lord Longford, who suggested I write a book. I've since written another four. The second, Going Straight, is about 20 people with similar experiences to me who are now doing something positive with their lives.

"The best part of my years as a probation officer was a three-year secondment into a youth offending team. That was absolutely brilliant. Many times I was an extension to the youngsters' families, very much like a surrogate dad. But probation moved on and I spent more time behind a computer rather than with offenders. I left a couple of years ago. I now do a lot of training with drink-drivers and people with speeding convictions. I also go into sixth-form colleges and talk about the risks of drugs and of getting involved with the wrong people.

"I still do a lot of charity work. I try and pay back for what I took from society. I've advised the Government on law-and-order issues, and been to Downing Street at the invitation of Cherie Blair because of the charity work I was involved with. I also do a lot of consultancy work on home security and try to help people keep their homes safe.

"Now when I put my head on the pillow at night I feel comfortable in my own skin. I do, however, feel terrible about my crimes. The last one was 30 years ago and I've spent the last 30 years trying to put things right.

"Rehabilitation is possible for anyone if they want to change."

As told to Julia Stuart

Here to help: five life-changing groups

The Restorative Justice Consortium

Based in London, the Restorative Justice Consortium was founded 10 years ago to represent groups around the UK with an interest in bringing victims and offenders together. "It builds confidence and reduces fear of crime," says chief executive Harriet Bailey, who cites recent research that says 80 per cent of offenders who take part in restorative programs feel it reduces the risk of them reoffending. In prisons, RJ groups host conferences and victim-offender mediation sessions to bring home the effect offenders' crimes can have on individuals. "If only RJ had been available to me years ago," said one ex-offender who Bailey met recently. "My life could have been so much different – and so would the lives of the numerous victims that I harmed."

The Forgiveness Project

Journalist Marina Cantacuzino launched The Forgiveness Project three years ago and regularly runs workshops and discussion groups in prisons to help offenders look at the harm they have done to themselves and others. Cantacuzino often takes speakers with her, including Richard McCann, who turned to crime and drugs after his mother became the first victim of Yorkshire Ripper Peter Sutcliffe, but has since reformed his life. "I took him into a room of 40 lifers, most of who had murdered," says Cantacuzino. "They found his story very compelling and realised he was someone who they could have been."

New Bridge

Founded more than 50 years ago, London-based New Bridge helps prisoners keep in touch with the outside world and prepares them for release. More than 200 volunteers are paired up with prisoners, offering a listening ear in the absence of family or friends. The group also offers translation services to foreign prisoners, who make up 12 per cent of our prison population, and supports imprisoned parents through its Family Matters course. In 1990, New Bridge launched Inside Time, a national monthly magazine distributed to all UK prisons, which now has a readership of more than 50,000.

Chance UK

Set up 11 years ago by an Islington policeman, Russ Horne, Chance UK puts together mentors and children from troubled backgrounds who are judged at risk of treading the path to criminality. After an intensive training programme, the mentors, many of them young career professionals without children of their own, commit to spending a few hours each week for one year with a child. Originally confined to Islington and Hackney, the group, which has helped more than 600 vulnerable children so far, has recently expanded its activities to include Crawley, Liverpool, Inverness and Derry.

Open book project

Convicted of affray in his youth, Joe Baden enrolled at an education centre in a cynical attempt to reduce his sentence. But his experience aroused an enthusiasm for learning and he secured a place at Goldsmiths College in London, from where he now manages the award-winning Open Book Project. Baden runs a support network for offenders to access further education and has helped dozens of ex-offenders get places at several institutions. " These people always had the potential, but never thought they could go to university," he says. "We use education as a tool to help offenders become the people they should have become."

Profiles by Simon Usborne