end, helping the families understand what the men are trying to do during the course. We visitors sat with 11 yellow-shirted prisoners, heard them act out some of the scenes and then joined with them in exercises dealing with stereotyping. I would defy anyone sitting in on this activity, and listening to the men, not to believe in its effectiveness. They spoke very directly about what this had meant to them, as individuals but also as members of a team helping each other to overcome barriers. It’s transformational. As a practical example, and found their way in society. Especially telling would be evidence on how the learning has helped them overcome the inevitable setbacks they will encounter (including, to be realistic, the possibility of recidivism – some will find their way back into prison, in spite of the course). As enthusiastic ambassadors for the course, their evidence is not exactly objective, but that does not invalidate it, especially if they continue to bear witness after they have been released. This kind of evidence-building needs time to accumulate, but it is possible. These two events made me think again Offender learning can be transformational, but evaluating the work can be tricky, particularly when it comes to tracking ex-offenders in the wider world they encounter on release, writes TOM SCHULLER they learn to plan their 10-minute phone calls home, to ask open-ended questions rather than ones that can be answered with a yes/no and so encourage their kids to talk more; and to think about how to make the family visits a positive experience for all the family. The prison officers responsible for delivering the Belmarsh course also spoke about what it had meant for them. For one, it had completely relaunched his career, from being a jaded officer with no job satisfaction to someone who looked forward to coming into work each day. So it works at the level of personal change, at the time the course happens. But is this sustained, and what happens afterwards? Many of them go on to do further courses in prison, including Open University courses. They deal better with problems in the prison, so that some prison officers who had previously been suspicious of the course as a soft option were persuaded of its efficacy, seeing the improvement in the individual behaviour of prisoners and in their positive influence on the prison climate. Harder questions involve the impact on families. We heard something about the plans for evaluating the activity, including whether there is an impact on the children’s performance at school. In principle, this should be the case, and I’m sure that it happens, but I’m doubtful how possible it is to demonstrate results on any statistical basis. I think the most powerful testimony will come from graduates of the scheme once they have been released about the ‘teachable moment’ idea, and how we need to be smarter in planning educational interventions and opportunities so that they occur at the time when they are most likely to have effect. We know now, from neuroscience research, that the prefrontal cortex which controls our executive function takes longer to mature than was previously recognised. No surprise to many parents of late teenagers, maybe. But many young men desist from crime in their mid-twenties, or at least wish to, but lack obvious alternatives. This is a key moment of potential development, with major consequences for themselves and for the rest of us. We are perfectly happy to subsidise courses, sports fields and cultural facilities for undergraduates as part of their personal maturation, and rightly so. To offer an equivalent to young offenders, mainly men, who come to a teachable point in their lives has exactly the same logic. They should not avoid punishment. But the offer of a real learning pathway, funded, say, to the equivalent of a year’s undergraduate degree, would not be a reward for crime but a real public investment. It could be offered around their twenty-fifth birthday, and be conditional upon completion of the kind of course that Safe Ground offers. I’d bet heavily that it would pay for itself in short order.
Tom Schuller is Director of Longview and co-author of Learning Through Life
SPRING 2012 ADULTS LEARNING 31
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