Landworks

Tindle News

Founded in 2013, Landworks has been described as an ‘offender rehabilitation project’ or work retraining training scheme for prisoners and those facing community sentences.

Transcript

00:00 Everything here has been built by the men and women who come here and everybody gets involved.

00:06 We really encourage people to come up with projects, different ideas.

00:11 But everyone's been involved in the construction and the building of the place.

00:15 There's a tremendous sense of ownership and that's something we found to be incredibly important,

00:19 that the people feel connected with something that perhaps was good in their life.

00:23 Most of the people who have graduated from here are still in touch and so we've got this huge sort of

00:28 not quite old boy network, we've got a lot of people who can stay in contact.

00:31 And over the years I've realised that's become incredibly important for resettlement.

00:36 This is independent and people do feel they've been here for a good purpose and feel good about themselves.

00:44 And I think that's why they want to stay in contact with us.

00:47 And there are many, many examples of people going on from here into employment.

00:52 We've got one man who's gone on to work for NHS Reconnect and he's now a peer mentor.

01:00 And he goes out and finds people in the prison system who need a placement like this and refers them to here.

01:06 What are your plans for the future? I mean if it works so well,

01:09 would it stand to reason that you would like to see this rolled out elsewhere in the country?

01:14 Yes, yes, yes, very much. And actually talking to someone like yourself today, that's a great way.

01:18 We're trying to get our messaging and influencing out a little bit further.

01:22 So we've got substantive evidence behind us now after 10, 11 years that shows that our re-offending rate is still around about 5%.

01:29 Employment rate is around about 92%.

01:32 So these are really good figures. It's about going forward.

01:36 And it's who you are today and how you're going to get out of this mess and what you're going to do in life.

01:41 [BLANK_AUDIO]

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