Landworks
Founded in 2013, Landworks has been described as an ‘offender rehabilitation project’ or work retraining training scheme for prisoners and those facing community sentences.
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NewsTranscript
00:00 Everything here has been built by the men and women who come here and everybody gets involved.
00:06 We really encourage people to come up with projects, different ideas.
00:11 But everyone's been involved in the construction and the building of the place.
00:15 There's a tremendous sense of ownership and that's something we found to be incredibly important,
00:19 that the people feel connected with something that perhaps was good in their life.
00:23 Most of the people who have graduated from here are still in touch and so we've got this huge sort of
00:28 not quite old boy network, we've got a lot of people who can stay in contact.
00:31 And over the years I've realised that's become incredibly important for resettlement.
00:36 This is independent and people do feel they've been here for a good purpose and feel good about themselves.
00:44 And I think that's why they want to stay in contact with us.
00:47 And there are many, many examples of people going on from here into employment.
00:52 We've got one man who's gone on to work for NHS Reconnect and he's now a peer mentor.
01:00 And he goes out and finds people in the prison system who need a placement like this and refers them to here.
01:06 What are your plans for the future? I mean if it works so well,
01:09 would it stand to reason that you would like to see this rolled out elsewhere in the country?
01:14 Yes, yes, yes, very much. And actually talking to someone like yourself today, that's a great way.
01:18 We're trying to get our messaging and influencing out a little bit further.
01:22 So we've got substantive evidence behind us now after 10, 11 years that shows that our re-offending rate is still around about 5%.
01:29 Employment rate is around about 92%.
01:32 So these are really good figures. It's about going forward.
01:36 And it's who you are today and how you're going to get out of this mess and what you're going to do in life.
01:41 [BLANK_AUDIO]