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Spend time with those doing time

Spend time with those doing time

Inmates and students can learn a lot from a new prison-visiting volunteer scheme,
discovers Fiona Sibley

     others.
   It stinks of credibility, too. Visiting
  criminals appeals to even those toocool-
  for-school students who would
 55 never be seen volunteering to take fruit
  to old people’s homes.
   The volunteers spent four months
  under the tuition of a former East End
  gangster and armed bank robber,
 60 Bobby Cummines. He appreciates the
  value of a small gesture of kindness.
  On Wednesday, Goldsmiths “I got into crime at an early age, and
 College student Rae Jenkin will not be went down at the age of 16 for
 spending her afternoon off playing possessing a sawn-off shotgun,” he
 hockey or watching soaps. Instead,65 says.
5 she will step on to C Wing of Brixton  “Later I served 13 out of 20 years
 prison, and come face to face with an for armed robbery, but a judge and a
 inmate. She doesn’t know who, only probation officer both told me I was
 that it will be someone selected for a worth more. I started an Open
 visit by the prison’s chaplain. Rae will70 University course to find out why I was
10 be there for an hour, during which she different and why I had got involved in
 and her inmate might talk about crime. People glamorise the lifestyle,
 television, what’s happening in the but mine was a seedy, gutter world.
 news, or what life is like - inside or I learnt how to escape from it through
 out.75 education.”
15  “I wanted to understand what prison  Today, Cummines is passionate
 was like for people, and to offer them about improving rehabilitation schemes
 someone to talk to,” says Rae, who at to prevent re-offending. “The Inmates
 21 has been inside one of Britain’s scheme is about chaIIenging people’s
 most notorious jails four times.80 belief systems - both the students’ and
20  “We spend an hour in the prison, the prisoners’. It’s about teaching
 once a week. You can’t comprehend offenders to become employable, and
 spending a whole day in there. It is so about decent citizenship. We hope
 cramped that two people are shoved in offenders will see another side of life,
 a single cell, and they are allowed out85 and come out of jail feeling less
25 on to the wing for only an hour a day. inclined to burgle someone’s house,
 The prisoners say they are supposed because it might belong to that
 to get out to exercise once a week, but student. These students can help
 is so understaffed that sometimes prisoners to develop self-confidence,”
 they don’t even get that.”90 he says.
30  If the pilot scheme takes off,  “This scheme will help us to recruit
 Inmates, a new prison-visiting volunteers who are younger and from
 volunteer scheme for students, might different ethnic backgrounds,” says
 be introduced nationally. Colleen Munroe, who organises visits
  One reformed ex-convict who is in95 for the Prison Service. “Prisoners
35 favour of the scheme is actor Stephen should benefit from seeing people to
 Fry. He landed a spell in a young whom they can relate better than the
 offenders’ institution aged 18 after he average National Association of Prison
 stole a family friend’s credit card and Visitors volunteer - who is generally
 booked himself in at the Ritz. “Many100 white, middle class and retired.”
40 people have a simplistic approach to  With four months’ training and
 crime and its causes, but the situation security clearance procedures to
 is often more complex than it appears,” complete, it’s not been 21 for these
 he says. students, but 32 are fully trained, and
  Goldsmiths College wants to make105 15 are already visiting people in
45 clear that volunteering is not being prison.
 dull. The Inmates scheme is perfect for  Think you can handle it? A similar
 getting bleary-eyed students to switch scheme may appear at your university
 off the television and do something soon - and there’s a lot to learn from
 that might challenge their abilities and110 doing a bit of time.
50 ideas, while improving the lives of