In my experience, prison education is based on KPI’s rather than employability & life skills. Now there are exceptions – and credit must go to Timpson’s and The Clink.
There was a Timpson’s workshop where I worked briefly as a cleaner. There was a qualifying criteria though – candidates had to be within 18 months of release – “Come back in ten years Moose!” Timpsons was an amazing initiative. Every day the lads would leave the wings and come to the shop, don their uniforms, aprons & name tags and set about their work. They would rip and repair shoes, engrave tags and repair watches. The lads had real life experience dealing with customers, in the form of prison staff who would have their repairs carried out in the shop. At the end of the day they would clean up, lock up and cash up. The onus was on the lads to complete all aspects of their training, tick of the modules and to get certified. If they did, they were guaranteed a job on release. Timpson’s had even helped one man to relocate, supporting him with a deposit for a flat that was repaid in instalments. That man went on to become a branch manager we heard.
The Clink is a restaurant, adjacent to a prison that is open to the public – it is staffed by a civilian management team and prisoners who are Released on Temporary Licence (ROTL). Here the lads gain qualifications and actual experience in catering and hospitality. The founder, Alberto Crisci MBE, has expanded the offering and is renowned for connecting graduates with employers in the community.
However, when I went to prison I reasoned that despite facing a life sentence, this was still my time to use. As a new arrival at HMP Liverpool, a ‘Category B Local Prison’, I was expected to complete basic Functional Skills in Maths & English. I was already a fairly well educated man, so this was completed within a few weeks. After this there was not a lot open to me.
When I moved to HMP Erlestoke I was despatched to the Education Department and again, it was determined that I needed to complete Functional Skills in English & Maths. It was better than being banged up, so I did the classes. Now as I reflect on that time I have to admit that I am deliciously conflicted. On the one hand, I would later find out that the education providers would invoice the prison for every successful certification achieved. It was worth around £900 if a prisoner achieved a Functional Skills Cert. Furthermore, if a prisoner started Entry Level 1, then completed Entry Level 2, then Level 1 – sure they would be able to bill £900 each time! I think that there was a ceiling, that the maximum that could be billed for one prisoner was around £4,000. In fairness, you can’t hate the player, you gotta play the game, and this was the game that HMP had set the rules for. HMP had a set of statistics that linked low functional skills with recidivism – so they set out KPI’s to ensure that as many men as possible were being taught functional skills. Yay! HMP them imposed rules restricting what other jobs men could undertake until they had achieved Functional Skills. This was a great opportunity for the forgers who would copy certificates in the library, just enough to make them passable. In return, the buyer would sacrifice a percentage of their wages until the fee had been paid. There was also a cottage industry in certification for Alcohol & Drug interventions, Behavioural Courses and Bricklaying, Plastering etc.
Furthermore, a cynic might question whether functional skills can stop recidivism? Just because a man increases his literacy and numeracy – does that guarantee a change in thinking and behaviour? And here’s where I am conflicted. There is one part of me that would argue sitting functional skills once, never mind twice, was of no benefit to me, and yet…
I was in HMP Erlestoke one Friday afternoon in June. My English tutor, Ena reminded us that the following Monday was a bank holiday and that there would be no classes. But, if we brought her anything, and she said anything that we took the time to write in our cells over the weekend, she would see to it that we would be paid a £1 bonus in our prison wages. That weekend I was feeling a tad melancholy – being in a box from 4-30pm when the sun is splitting the stones outside will do that to a man. But I thought back to my last visit home to Dublin and how much it had changed. I wrote a page and thought little else about it. On the following Tuesday I returned to the class and handed my page to Ena – only one other guy from the class of 7 handed anything in. On the Wednesday as I sat in my chair Ena came striding purposefully towards me, so much so that I was a little taken aback.
“Read this” she urged me, as she handed me the page I had written. She had highlighted a paragraph. I read:
Gone the serpentine road, the 2 and 3 storey tenements, the ground floor shop fronts, gone too, the people. The area had been suffering the effects of industrial decline during my childhood and youth, but I could never have anticipated the genocide committed against the character of the place. If the leaning and staggered rooftops of the old buildings were like a familiar gap-toothed smile, what appeared before me that morning was like the sterile, insincere veneers of an American newsreader’s grin.
Ena smiled at me and said “I knew it would sound like that. I could hear your voice when I read it last night. You must finish this story.” As I reflect on this I can’t overstate the seismic impact that this interaction has had on my life. I completed the story and felt pretty good about it. I took a leap and put it out there for the world to see at the Koestler Awards. I started to write more. I wrote reflective pieces that helped me to heal. I applied for the position as Editor of the prison magazine, The Manor (there are PDF versions available via the menu). Then I started this blog.
So what precipitated this particular blog? Well initially I was going to have a go at the prison for KPI based education – but now I think back I couldn’t be more grateful for that education. It’s not the curriculum that matters. It’s not the certification. It’s the teachers that count. It is those incredible people, like Ena who help us to realise that the better version of ourselves is already within us. The link to the mentioned short story, O’Keefe and the Aliens is below – incidentally, my bestest mate in this story, Jim, is also the man who published my blog for 6 years – and all because of the teachers that supported me and helped me get my writings to him.
