"Circles of Support"
Interest Grows
Quaker News

Interest continues to grow in the idea of circles of support and accountability for sex offenders released from gaol.

Readers will recall from previous reports that this approach met with success in Canada with very low rates of re-offending from former prisoners. With the encouragement of the Home Office, Friends from the Crime and Community Justice Committee (CCJC) set up a workshop last summer to look more closely at the idea.

Five Canadians visited specially and explained how the scheme worked, that a local community sets up a circle of support and accountability with a released prisoner, keeps in close contact - weekly if not daily - and how the core member (the former prisoner) covenants not to re-offend.

The workshop, which was attended by professionals from the probation service, prisons, parole, psychology, the police, the churches as well as organisations representing victims, was the launching pad for ever-widening interest in the scheme.

Another meeting is to be held on February 8. It is hoped that attenders will hear news of pilot schemes being developed by the probation services in Northumbria and Hampshire, which are seeking funding from the Home Office.

The Home Office recently advertised funding for projects for restorative justice but an application by the CCJC to further work on circles of support was turned down, albeit sympathetically, as not fitting the criteria the Home Office had in mind. The proposal involved specially-appointed Yearly Meeting staff to administer the scheme.

Now in February the committee is seeking approval in principle from Meeting for Sufferings to carry forward such an idea.

The Guardian carried a long article on December 13 written by Rosemary Hartsill, (North Northumberland PM) and former religious affairs correspondent of the BBC, which was re-printed in The Friend of January 5.

In response to the articles in Quaker News at least three serving prisoners have been in contact with Helen Drewery, secretary to the CCJC, as well as others on behalf of prisoners and professionals working in the field. There was an enthusiastic response when Helen Drewery talked on the subject to members of the Home Affairs Committee of the Church of England. Further developments are expected.