We had a great meeting with an organisation called User Voice last week.
Led by best-selling author, and ex-offender, Mark Johnson, they aim to reduce re-offending. Considering 75% of young offenders re-offend within two years of their release from prison, clearly an important job.
One of the ways they are doing this is through prison councils – like school councils but in prisons. And though their ‘users’ might be there for different reasons, talking about some of the similarities led to some really interesting discussions.
Prisons, like schools, have to listen to the views of their prisoners. Mark said that:
‘some Governors just get a couple of prisoners into their office to show that they are listening to their views. Other Governors might get together a forum of prisoners that they know will agree with them, to show they are listening’
Now go back and replace ‘Governor’ with ‘Headteacher’, and ‘prisoner’ with ‘student’. This sounds very familiar when thinking about student voice in schools.
So we’re going to help User Voice with resources for elections, and keeping prison councils energised. We’ll hopefully work with them on some regional youth events too later in the year.
Great to link up with such an inspiring organisation, and one involver can learn a lot from.
Greg