Jonathan Aitken calls for prison 'mentors' to tackle reoffending

Drawing on his own experience, former cabinet minister calls for new network of 15,000 mentors

Former cabinet minister Jonathan Aitken is drawing on his personal experience of befriending and helping a former prison inmate to quit crime and find a stable job, as he calls on ministers to establish a new national network of 15,000 mentors to slash reoffending rates.

In a report on mentoring for the Centre for Social Justice thinktank, Aitken tells for the first time how he helped Leroy Skeete, a fellow inmate in Belmarsh prison in 1999, where Skeete was serving an 11-year sentence for aggravated bodily harm, to end his cycle of reoffending and find full-time work a decade later.

Continue reading...



Source Latest news, sport and comment from the Guardian | The Guardian http://ift.tt/1jjBUa0