General Election: The final straight
The issue of prisoners and their victims has already played a part in this election campaign and will probably do so again in the final straight. As a Christian community, Prison Fellowship urges churches across the UK to reflect prayerfully on this area.
Three decades’ experience of working in prisons, where our 1400 dedicated Christian volunteers help restore the lives of victims of crime, offenders and their families, leads us to underline the following:
1. The current retributive system based on punishing wrongdoing is perpetuating crime and results, sadly, in high rates of re-offending. We need to break the cycle of crime and think about our criminal justice system in a different way.
PF’s work centres on restorative justice/victim awareness, based on the biblical principles of forgiveness and restoration. It puts the victim at the heart of the criminal justice system. We help offenders understand the impact of their crime on their victim and choose to transform their lives. Our restorative justice/victim awareness programme works in reducing re-offending.
All three political parties support the expansion of restorative justice because it works. As one politician said recently, it is the most over-researched and under-used approach. Any new government should make this available to every prisoner.
2. As a Christian organization, we welcome those wanting to protect the Christian voice in a crowded marketplace. PF volunteers are a powerful witness to their Christian faith, as they give of their time, energy and compassion to those in prison. They demonstrate Christ’s love to the most excluded and should be able to do so freely.
A Christian ministry to prisoners and their families should be welcomed by any new administration. All parties recognise the importance of volunteers and are looking to them to play a greater role in delivering public services, yet it is increasingly difficult for our volunteers to get security clearance to work in prison. This part of the voluntary sector is acutely under-funded.
3. There are currently 2, 500 children in prison in England and Wales, more than in any other European country. 75% of them re-offending within a year. We need to find more effective ways of breaking the cycle of crime that these children find themselves in. 40% will have been homeless previously and 70% have been either in care or involved with social services (compared with 0.5 % of all children).
4. The families of offenders are often the unseen, and innocent victims of crime. 160 000 children will be without a parent because of imprisonment, and in 2006 more children had a parent in prison, than divorced. Yet little is done to support those children, or strengthen family ties which are an important factor in reducing re-offending. The proposals in the manifestos that seek to claw back from prisoners a proportion of the costs of prison would significantly increase poverty among those children.
Thank you for reading this briefing and please keep in close touch with our website.
Issued by Natalie Cronin
Prison Fellowship
24 Hour Media Office 01482 562455