Workshops

The workshops take the form of an interactive presentation designed to challenge attitudes to crime. This presentation is drama based and includes:

• A pre-event questionnaire.
• Standards of behaviour for the day.
• A warm up session that challenges perceptions and judgments by asking the young people to estimate prisoners’ offences and sentences on physical appearances only.
• A description of the routine of prison life through personal testimony.
• Improvised role play that highlights peer pressure, bullying, crime, drugs and victims issues. Young people participate in the drama.
• A half hour break to talk informally with prisoners. 
• Prisoners’ personal testimonies about their own experiences.
• ‘Frozen pictures’ or ‘Masks’ where scenes illustrate relationships and positive/negative consequences of behaviour.
• Photos of the realities of prison life.
• Feedback.
• A post-event questionnaire, compared to the pre-event questionnaire completed prior to the workshop.
• A concluding summary where attendees are reminded that though they are now free to leave the prison, others are not - who denied themselves the freedom to choose. We advise the young people not to lose that choice.

There are opportunities to be trained in communication skills by the Geese Theatre Company and in youth work up to NVQ level III by the Lifetrain Trust, providing better job prospects upon release. The NVQ work also covers child protection issues. To complement this formal instruction there is an ongoing process of in-house training where experienced prisoners pass on their skills to new members of the scheme.

In addition to staging weekly events the Coldingley team work closely with the Surrey Youth Offending Team on the ‘Can Do’ programme, where young offenders, referred by the courts as an alternative to custody, attend twelve intensive group work sessions in the prison. This is a unique, dynamic and successful initiative. There are also ‘one-off’ sessions for individual or small groups of young people on specific issues.

As well as successfully demonstrating to large numbers of young people ways of avoiding offending behaviour, the Crime Diversion Scheme provides a vehicle for prisoners to build communication skills and self-confidence and offers them a chance to give something back to society. 

After all, we know that it’s better ‘out than in’!