CR spoke with Tim Rosier from Reflex

Tim Rosier

Young Offenders Institutions (YOIs) in England are not providing the most basic education requirements; new data from the Centre for Social Justice (CSJ) has shown. It found that just one in nine state-run YOIs are delivering their minimum requirement of 15 hours of education to each teenager per week.

Previously Emily Graves discussed this with Penelope Gibbs, the Chair of The Standing Committee for Youth Justice (SCYJ) that works for reform of the youth justice system in England and Wales. To examine this issue further and also look at the whole area of re-offending, Emily spent time chatting with Tim Rosier, Head of Outreach at Reflex.

Reflex is part of YFC and exists to empower children, young people and young adults to break the cycle of offending and reoffending. They operate in 14 prisons, across five regions equipping young people with the skills, character and confidence to realise their full potential.

Emily: Please could you start by telling me about Reflex and your role?

Tim: Absolutely. Reflex is the prison ministry overseen by Youth for Christ working in 14 prisons, primarily Young Offender Institutions, although we also work with some young adult offenders, which is up to the age of 24 in adult prisons. We work across five regions. The aim is to break the cycle of offending and reoffending. We want to break those patterns of behaviour that mean people are caught in this revolving door of criminality. The reason for that might just be that they don't know any different. Other reasons might be an addiction, or it might be negative thought patterns and behaviours and so on. The whole concept of engaging with young people in order to break those cycles of offending and reoffending is about understanding the link between the way people think, the way people feel and the way that they act. That's cognitive behavioural theory in a nutshell; the way that people feel about themselves, that sense of worth or worthlessness depending on how they view themselves, will impact the way that they think and inevitably impact on the way that they behave. Reflex is about changing those things in order for young people to realise their full potential.

Emily: So what is your role?

Tim: I'm head of outreach, which basically just means that I look after all of our outreach workers. Reflex work on the basis that relational youth work is the key; it's the tool in the box of how we work within the prisons. The outreach worker works in the prison; they draw keys and have free reign to walk around the prison and to engage with young offenders in their cells, in the association areas, next to the pool table, in the canteen and to walk alongside them on this journey of discovering what it is that makes them tick and helping them to change. The outreach worker is key. They are the person who delivers all of Reflex's work, be that non-formal education programmes, or linking them with mentors post-release. My role is to support our network of outreach workers across the country in order to do that. I was a probation officer myself for 10 years and I've engaged with many types of different offenders in different settings, so I can utilise some of my experience in order to help those who work for Reflex.

Emily: What are some of the programmes that you do in the prisons?

Tim: Reflex does three things; they have three outputs. Outreach is the key for us. That's the relational journey with a detached youth worker who models pro-socially what it is to be a positive contributor to society and they facilitate all of the work that Reflex do.

In terms of the specific programmes, Reflex operate on the basis that non-formal education is the best way to engage the marginalised young people, in that it's not sitting in a classroom and undertaking formal education, it's meeting young people where they're at and using that as a starting place and moving on from that rather than teaching from a curriculum. Examples would include our Koestler-award-winning urban schools programme: it's a creative arts, performing arts programme that takes young people on a journey of creative reflection and positive expression. Using that programme we get them to reflect on their past experiences, the decisions they've made, the emotions that they've felt attributed to those life experiences and start to understand in a creative way a little bit about themselves and perhaps why they've acted in the way that they have. Then we get them to re-frame that and express their hopes for the future in a positive way, so, "Ok, up to now this is what's happened, but what is it I can do differently to change?" Through that process we then get them to either write a play or to write lyrics and then we get professional musicians or actors in to help them take that experience and that programme and deliver it in a practical way. Quite often we get young offenders to write lyrics and work as a group to produce a track themselves, which they then record in prison, both musically and video and then they get a copy of that DVD at the end, which for many of them is the first thing that they've done that they can feel proud of and have a sense of achievement about. The therapeutic means of expressing those things through music or creative art of itself is quite therapeutic and can cause people to change. Urban Schools is award-winning and it's really impactive.

The other programme we run is called My Life, which is a life and living skills, or a character-development programme. This came out of some market research that Reflex did with offenders themselves and our Reflex work across the country and we found that while the thinking skills that the prison deliver are fine, it's about having the character to be able to uphold those new thinking skills.

What's really interesting is that in the London riots report there was an independent panel that produced a report and there's a quote from this, which moves me every time. It says, "What determines whether somebody makes the right choice in the heat of the moment is character". It's not knowledge, it's not skills, it's not necessarily knowing the right people or the right things to say; it's who you really are inside. We found a real niche in the market and there was no provision for character development.

My Life in the fullness of time will have up to 25 different courses; there are currently five written at the moment. It's aimed at those who are low literacy or the high-need offenders. It does a number of exercises and develops character and skills in order for young people on release from prison, when they're in that moment of high risk of reoffending, who they really are in that moment, the character that they've developed will determine whether they make the right choice in the heat of that moment and steer clear of offending behaviour.

We're experiencing a lot of interest in My Life at the moment as a result of that. The other thing we do is we also do Uncut, which is a chaplaincy resource. We give that to chaplaincies for people to consider faith issues for themselves, if that is what they want to do. The other output is resettlement mentoring and for us the key is the relationship. The most risky period for a young offender is in the 48 hours after leaving prison, going back to their old communities and old associates. We partner with an organisation called Caring for Ex-Offenders who do this though the gate resettlement mentoring. They meet the offender prior to release and start to form a relationship and a friendship with them. Then they meet them at the gate on the date of release and carry on that relationship and positive role model into the community and beyond, helping them to reintegrate into society and faith communities if that's relevant for them and walking alongside them.