Restoring Rehabilitation fringe event at the Conservative Party Conference

Crispin Blunt MP, Jonathan Aitken, Jerry Pethrik (Managing Director of G4S) and Caring for Ex-Offenders' Paul Cowley all spoke on the topic of Restoring Rehabilitation at the Centre for Social Justice fringe meeting on Tuesday afternoon.

Paul Cowley was invited onto the panel as a practitioner in this field. Jonathan Aitken spoke particularly about the need to do something about the literacy levels of people coming out of prison and Jerry Pethrik mentioned the accommodation problems faced by ex-offenders as one of the main reasons he saw the same people returning to his prisons. Crispin Blunt MP told the group about the Conservative Party's enthusiasm in working with skilled individuals and charitable organisations to tackle the high recidivism of those who had been in prison by helping remedy their multiple social problems. He said rehabilitation was high on the agenda, and that he was looking for new ways to instutitute this new drive on reducing reoffending.
Paul Cowley, following on from praise from Jonathan Aitken about the work Caring for Ex-Offenders was doing, describing the importance of dealing with ex-offenders in an holistic way. He described the good use of volunteers who can then fulfill the need to find accommodation for ex-offenders from housing providers. He told a few success stories from Caring for Ex-Offenders, telling the panel and the audience how this programme has worked so far to reduce re-offending by its users.
One audience member, a political editor for Newsnight was impressed by what he described as 'Caring for Ex-Offenders doing what everybody else is talking about' and recommended Paul Cowley to be a guest on Newsnight with Theresa May that evening. Read that story for more details and to see the interview with Jeremy Paxman.