Mr. Mark Johnson:

I thank the committee for asking me to come to present myself and the organisation today.

My name is Mark Johnson. I have a well-documented history, coming from disadvantage and being caught up in the criminal justice system at a very young age. I am the author of a book, Wasted, that, I think, I have seen in 20 different languages. I write for The Guardian newspaper and I am an Ashoka fellow. I am a visiting lecturer at Durham University on the psychology degree. I am an ex-offender and that is what I have come to talk about.

I set up an organisation on which I probably worked for six years. It has been registered as a charity in the United Kingdom for the past four years. It is called User Voice and its underline is, "Only offenders can stop re-offending", which will give the committee a brief on what it is about.

This has been my focus. From entering a period of rehabilitation in 2000, I got clean off drugs. I started an arboricultural business - tree surgery. In four years, I employed over 200 young offenders in the business and I developed what I would term a therapeutic work-based environment, that is, one not only works physically but engages mentally in a behavioural change programme that starts in the mind by talking about thoughts and feelings rather than what work one is doing.

From there, I wrote the book and started to consult with the British Government, and came up with this idea where I believe there is a gap in the criminal justice system, that is, to learn from the experiences and insight of those at the sharp end of the system. Often I have found that there is a gap between those who make the policy and those who must live the reality of the system, and my objective for the past six years has been to develop a model that brings them closer together.

I set up the organisation as a charity four years ago. This year we turned over £100 million. We work in the United Kingdom, from Northumberland, in a 100 mile geographic spread, to Kent and all in between. We represent probably 15% of the criminal justice system in England, that is, prison and the probation community, and now in youth justice as well.

What is it? We use a council model, a democratic process of service-user engagement. It is ordered. We go into prison and we use ex-offenders, who often are the best placed to help somebody who is currently offending to stop because it is that "walked in your shoes" experience. Offending behaviour, and stepping out of it, is so complex that often the most effective intervention is this communication that takes place between one who is a couple of steps further on than the other and who knows how to navigate his thoughts and feelings and provide information on what one must do to stop offending. We piloted it in the Isle of Wight in England to 1,600 prisoners on three different sites: Camp Hill, the under 12-months sentence prison; Albany, which is a sex-offender prison where the average length of stay is eight and a half years; and Parkhurst, which is a violent, maximum security prison.

In one year, there was a reduction in prisoner complaints in the sex-offender prison - it is an old-age group, a very articulate cohort of persons who submit many complaints and clog the system up, and cost a great deal of money in that time - by 37%. In Parkhurst prison, there was a reduction in the use of solitary confinement or segregation from 160 days to 47. At a £30,000 fee it suggested that by addressing problems closer to the cause and involving the community, one reduces the need and expense for punitive measures, and issues were dealt with swiftly by the community.

Another of my findings in working with this group is that one its characteristics is the low levels of resilience that exist within it and they find it very difficult to social situations without being violent or disruptive. Part of the programme, with the learning of this council model, teaches resilience and is, in itself, an intervention.

The prison governor would see what we do as a cost-cutting tool. The UK has seen some significant cuts in the prison budget. My challenge is that one cannot make the same amount of cuts or remove such a large amount of funding without taking a community along with those changes, otherwise one would get an increase in disturbances, etc. I believe that is why the prison governor highly values this tool.

The prison staff would benefit from low levels of disturbance or occasions of assault on members of staff, and also a more respectable running community - I see prison as a community - where everybody is respectful towards each other and the end user, the prisoner, would get to play a role in something that is positive and contributive. There is much psychology on how a person doing something positive is less likely to go back and do something negative.

We have moved that out into the community. In London, there are 33 boroughs in London and there are 23 local delivery units for probation services. We are now in 18 of those boroughs in central London.

It is being used in all sorts of ways about which I could not tell the committee in five minutes. What I can say is that, as far as evidence is concerned, we work with Cambridge University, which is working on a measure in prison called measurement of prison quality of life, MPQL. It is one that the inspectorate uses in the prison. Through conversations I have had with the Irish Prison Service, I am aware that it is looking for a similar kind of measurement. This model is been measured against MPQL in three prisons: Aylesbury which is public-sector run, Maidstone, which is public-sector run; and Birmingham, which is a private G4S prison with 1,600 prisoners.

We will see the outcome of that pretty soon. We have had the worst economic climate, yet in this environment User Voice was started and now has a turnover of £1 million. Some 80% of my organisation is made up of ex-offenders and we have had 100% contract retention in those four years. Although many of the programmes, interventions, etc. are being cut, the people on the ground who need to have effective programmes that have resonance for those they work with have retained our service. That is all.