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We are qualified and experienced Restorative Practitioners both with an extensive history of working with marginalised people. We met while working together in a local organisation that delivered traditional Restorative Justice with victims and offenders. The service was victim led and worked in partnership with Avon and Somerset police.
Whilst working together, we both recognised that there is a much wider impact of criminal and associated behaviour, which is on important relationships. We were so passionate about this idea, that we left our paid employment to harness the concept of using restorative practice to enable the people in prison to make amends with their families and significant others.
We set up Inside Out RJ as a Community Interest Company in September 2022 and were welcomed by the Head of Reducing Re Offending at HMP Bristol to develop and deliver our initiative.
Our innovative project is based on Lord Farmer's Report (2017) which highlighted that the relationships with families or significant others serve as the 'golden thread' to a prisoner's rehabilitation. This report demonstrates that investment in social capital significantly improves desistance and "that there is an unacceptable inconsistency of respect for the role families can play in boosting rehabilitation and assisting in resettlement across the prison estate". In short, the "principle is that relationships are fundamentally important if people are to change".
HMP Bristol recognised that our service could benefit the prisoners both in terms of their mental health whilst in custody, and by reducing future offending behaviour. Our initial research amongst the prison population demonstrated a clear appetite for our service and we received self referrals from prisoners immediately.
We were part funded by the prison and partly by Bristol City Council. We always knew this was a finite stream of funding and despite the overwhelming demand on our service, we have sadly been unable to secure further funding to continue our work.
Lord Farmer stated that "In this era of ongoing constriction on public spending, family ties are themselves a resource that newly empowered governors can, and must, deploy in the interest not just of reducing reoffending rates, but also of creating a more settled regime".
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