Holding the key, podcast episode 7: Bishop Rachel talks to Vicky Fobel

Published: Tuesday October 29, 2024

Vicky Fobel, Head of the Better Justice PartnershipThis podcast features the Anglican Bishop for HM Prisons, the Right Revd Rachel Treweek, in conversation with Vicky Fobel. Vicky is the Head of the Better Justice Partnership, a group of organisations who are working together to promote evidence-based policymaking in the criminal justice system.

In this seventh podcast in the series of ‘Holding the Key: Unlocking the door to doing prison differently’, Vicky tells us, “At least thirty percent of people in prison have a learning disability or difficulty. When a young person has contact with the system first, we should use that as an opportunity to get that person the support that they need, and that should be the time that we invest. It’s a lot cheaper to do that than to build prisons.”

Speaking about the work of the partnership, she explained, “Our focus is on early intervention and diversion. At the moment the prison population has doubled over three decades. We now have the highest prison population in Western Europe. With such overcrowded and understaffed prisons, it is very hard to rehabilitate in prison.

“We see the first solution as reducing that prison population.”

Vicky points out that intervention should take place with young people when they first have contact with the prison system: “That’s an opportunity to intervene in a way that tackles the causes of that offending. At the moment, we aren’t doing that very much. We need to tackle the causes of crime as well as tackling crime. In the long run, they won’t need to build more prisons.”

Bishop Rachel responded, “We need a long-term view. We are always dealing with the crisis, we never have that long term view.

We live in a society where we want a quick fix. We want something that wins popularity now. Actually, as we’ve already seen with the Government, it’s not popular to be making long term decisions, but we have to do that.”

 

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About the series

Bishop Rachel is currently recording a series of Podcasts called –  ‘Holding the key: A series of conversations to unlock the door to doing prison differently’. Bishop Rachel will be joined by influencers and change-makers as they ask the questions – what is prison really for and more importantly what could the alternatives be?

Find out more about the series →
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