Mr. Mark Johnson:

I am not sure if I provided detail of the structure of the programme in my notes. It starts with an ex-offender entering the prison who then starts with inspirational storytelling about himself or herself to see if that resonates. Then we use a survey. Arnstein developed the ladder of citizen engagement which is about engagement and its value. At the bottom is written "informing feedback survey". It is a tokenistic form for getting insight. It has no value for the person involved but we use surveys because they introduce us to people. We cover all members in a prison face-to-face and get them to complete a questionnaire. That gives us their contact information and whether they are willing to do a little more. From there we can use a few different tools, some of which are quite colourful, depending on the age group and location. We run focus groups. We use a storming and forming concept, taking the million and one issues and gripes and complaints that a governor often hears and work with the focus group to fold those personal gripes and complaints into issue-based complaints.

The council is not personality-based which would be corruptible where there are forceful criminal characters involved. It is issue based. Often four parties form. Their world can fall into four areas, housing and resettlement, training and education, drugs and alcohol, community and environment, the prison community itself. Every gripe that I have ever heard could be housed under one of those headings. We teach them campaigning techniques and strategising. We bring local politicians into the prisons and the community to talk about canvassing, how they respond to the public, etc. A steering group then does a dummy run of a council election, going out to canvass and telling the public what they are standing for and it goes to a vote. They get proportional representation on the council. It is quite interesting to watch a group of people who have never voted or had an interest in voting start to emerge and strategise. One party that is smart will be the biggest but it will run for only one term because everybody starts to figure out that it will put its proposals forward if they do not jump in. Interesting dynamics start to occur within the prison. In that process we are teaching people resilience and how to resolve conflict non-violently, which is sometimes a completely new and fresh approach for many of these people.

I can give a lot of anecdotal material about how I have watched these very small things develop. A quote I often hear from a prison governor is "I am amazed that it is the smallest things have the biggest impact in the prison environment." One example is a deep clean of a visitors' hall when somebody's loved ones and children are coming. That has a huge impact on the prison environment. I have seen a group of prisoners at Parkhurst win a can-opener. It may be an absurd instrument but when one is serving a life sentence and is allowed to buy tins of fruit in the canteen but there is no way to open them, it causes a lot of frustration.

There are big effects too, for example, in Parkhurst, the council was instrumental in voting in and doing the groundwork in the community to bring vulnerable prisoners in with mainstream prisoners. The cohort in Parkhurst are violent armed robber types and very high level sex offenders but the council was instrumental in voting the community of vulnerable people in. That is another thing on which we cannot put a cost but it is massive. In one wing it was like running two separate prisons but they are now integrated which cuts the amount of staff time required to manage them. That came through the communities saying that they are respectful towards one another.

I could not describe the sophistication of the model in an hour but I can provide any information that the committee requires. Four or five years within this environment trying to get this group of people into prisons, never mind produce outcomes, has been difficult but it is well thought out.