27 April 2005

London: Prisoners all over UK are thanking heads of non-profit organizations for allowing them to become volunteers under a pre-release placement project.

The project, implemented by Community Services Volunteers (CSV), allows prisoners to work full-time on community projects such as care homes or with homeless people prior to being freed. The scheme aims to help prisoners adjust to life outside while giving them a fresh purpose and sense of responsibility.

Lewis, who has just finished a sentence in Wales, said: "Once you are in prison, the fear of getting out is often greater than the fear of going in. No one can prepare you for that first time. So to be able to do it through this project with CSV was amazing.

“I was just a number to everybody, to the police, to the lawyers, to the prison. But being with CSV I was treated like a human being again, because they were working for me, and it wasn't just me being stuck in the system."

Since the scheme began 21 years ago, CSV has placed more than 3,150 prisoners who have given more than 500,000 hours to society, often working with some of the most vulnerable people in the community.

Martin Narey, head of the National Offender Management Service, revealed an "astonishing" 97 per cent of prisoners who took part in the project completed their volunteer placement.

"Part of what we are trying to do is work with people as individuals, by looking not at what they have done, but to try and see what they could do,” he said.

"Frequently the CSV placement will be the first time that a young prisoner has been given the responsibility to care for someone else, to prove what they can contribute.

"This is all part of a policy of seeing beyond people's offences. It is a way of helping prisoners to be in contact with people who are less privileged than themselves, and it is about letting members of the public see prisoners in a different light."

CSV is the one of UK’s leading volunteering agency and works across the country to reconnect people to their community through volunteering.

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From: Community Newswire