This is the story about how Ashfield Young Offenders Institution (YOI), South Gloucestershire became connected to Monkton Combe School and Monkton Bluefriars. I am part of that connection. Let me explain. From 2001 to 2007 I was HM Chief Inspector of Probation and subsequently Chairman of the Youth Justice Board (YJB) for England and Wales. The YJB oversees our youth justice system. My permanent home is in Bath because, before working in Whitehall, I was employed by the University of Bath and then Bristol. I am not, and never have been, a rower. A sailor, yes. But not a rower. For me rowing has always been simply the means of getting out from the shore to one's boat, usually in a rubber dinghy with annoyingly inefficient or broken rowlocks. But in spring 2008 someone told me about proper rowing.
I was in Leicester speaking about our youth justice system to a training session for judges. My host, the co-ordinating judge for the East Midlands, suggested to me over lunch that indoor rowing machines offered wonderful potential for young prisoners. Rowing, he said, was about the best aerobic exercise going.. Rowing machines could be used in a confined space. They could also be connected electronically for competition purposes. If linked via the internet competitions could be held in real time between persons in different physical locations. My host clearly knew what he was talking about. He was a serious club rower and he knew a bit about youth justice.
I'm deeply committed to our doing a better job for young people who get into serious trouble with the law. Most of those who end up in custody come from the most deprived neighbourhoods and typically are multiply disadvantaged. They tend to come from dysfunctional, fractured families, have often been abused, have generally failed to achieve educationally, are generally precocious abusers of tobacco, alcohol and illicit drugs and often suffer from poor mental and physical health. If our youth justice system aims to protect us from such young people becoming persistent adult offenders, then it doesn't work. Roughly 80% of the young offenders who end up in custody reoffend within two years of release and a high proportion return again and again to prison until they burn out as career offenders in their 30s or 40s. Despite their enormous expense, our YOIs are overcrowded, ill-resourced, failing institutions.
So, on my way back from Leicester I mulled over the rowing idea and it grew in my head. I found out about rowing machines and a few weeks later I contacted the governor of the YOI closest to Bath, Ashfield, which, with a population of 400 15-17 year old young men, is the largest in the country. I asked the governor whether it would appeal to her to link up with, say, a local school or community rowing club for competition purposes. She was enthusiastic.
I didn't know much about Monkton Combe. But I knew it was a rowing school because in summer I sometimes swim in the Avon about a third of a mile downstream from the School's boathouse. I rang the Principal, Richard Backhouse. He agreed to meet me and immediately embraced the idea that Monkton Combe students might compete against Ashfield prisoners. He introduced me to Gordon Reay, the School's rowing coach. Subsequently a meeting took place between staff from both institutions and, to cut a long story short, in December 2008 there took place the first indoor rowing competition, in the gymnasium at Ashfield YOI. Julian Bewick attended with the Monkton team, two of the machines being used having been donated to Ashfield by Monkton Bluefriars. Steve Williams, Beijing Olympic Gold Medallist, distributed medals to the competition winners.
How might this idea develop? Since Monkton and Ashfield got together, the vision that all young prisoners might be given the opportunity to learn to row indoors has been taken to the Prison Service and the Amateur Rowing Association (ARA).
A pilot project has been agreed and an initial demonstration and training session organised by the ARA for YOI physical education instructors. The development of a national YOI indoor rowing league has been mooted and my hope is that every YOI can eventually be linked with a community-based rowing club so that any young prisoner who takes to rowing on a machine while in custody can take it up on the water on release.
I'm still not a rower - though I do now have my own machine at home: I feel that if I'm going to advocate the scheme then I've got to show some willing personally, and I rather like it. I'm not arguing that rowing offers a unique pathway to prisoner rehabilitation. But I do think that rowing can be one route for prisoners to get healthy exercise and develop personal discipline and achievement, which for some might be the means of acquiring self-confidence, respect and positive resettlement within the law-abiding community.
What is clear is that Monkton Combe School and Monkton Bluefriars were part of the catalyst for what I consider an exciting innovation. In spring 2009 a second indoor competition took place between Monkton Combe and Ashfield YOI. A third is planned. And having learned that another YOI wishing to join the national pilot project lacked the necessary equipment, Monkton Bluefriars offered to assist with a further donation to enable more rowing machines to be purchased, for which my grateful thanks.
Monkton represents the world of social privilege, Ashfield YOI the reverse. But the manner in which those who manage these two institutions clasped hands across the divide has for me been a model of what we desperately need to do more of in contemporary Britain. That sentiment sounds both serious and pompous, so let me temper it. The meetings have also been terrific fun and educative. Ashfield prisoners learned that you don't have to have pumped up forearms to have strength, stamina and physical prowess. And Monkton students learned that prisoners are not alien monsters and prisons are not holiday camps. All rather useful. My vision is that the two camps should in future meet on the water, and may the best win.
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