Mr. Mark Johnson:

I am an Ashoka fellow. I am not sure if any members are aware of that - I was not until I was made one. Ashoka is part of Change Nation and change makers. I came over here to do a keynote address in Wheatfield. Basically the criminal justice system is mainly the Prison Service, the director general, etc. I brought over a prison governor to outline his experience and there was some resonance. I returned and gave a talk at Trinity College where I spoke to senior members of the Probation Service and Prison Service. We have submitted a proposal to look at the Mountjoy Prison campus with the three different groups of people - young offenders, women and adult males. Our model is about coming in, upskilling the community and then leaving. It is not a static service where we are there forever.

My mission is to try to get prison joined up with the community. In the UK that is not the case because a person sent to prison there can be sent anywhere in the country and therefore a prisoner when leaving will not necessarily go back into the community in which the prison is based. However, in the Mountjoy campus there is significant capacity to do work on entry into prison, which is when rehabilitation should start by having this peer-led mentoring and support and then actually working within the community outside also. In that process it is ringing out its full potential. It adds benefit to the prison as a community and makes better services. It makes better services on release and people are more in tune because people are communicating with the horse's mouth, so to speak. It also produces this intervention and this peer-led approach to breaking the cycle of crime. Peer-led approach is probably the most underestimated intervention that has ever been exposed and yet it is completely underfunded because it does not fit in the confines of how we procure services. However, for me, it is the real answer. There is all manner of evidence, including the 12-step fellowships of Alcoholics Anonymous and Narcotics Anonymous - worldwide programmes on alcohol and drug treatment - that are completely peer led and among the most successful programmes on the planet. Taking some of that approach of people, who have shared some experience but actually live successfully, has proven hugely successful.