U-Casadh, a programme initiated by a one-time prison officer, provides support and training to former prisoners. The results have been startling.
In a shed in Ferrybank, just outside Waterford city, some men are building a boat. “It’s a traditional method of boat-building,” says Jim Bruton, a supervisor, counsellor and boat enthusiast at the U-Casadh project. “The Vikings were doing this sort of thing.”
“I never thought I’d be building a boat,” says a keen 22-year-old fisherman, Johnny Delaney, shaking his head. “I’d like to build my own some day.”
The U-Casadh Project (the name means “U-turn”) was established by a former prison officer, Stephen Plunkett. It provides a structured programme of therapeutic support, education, training, employment and enterprise opportunities for former prisoners and people who have been in trouble with the law. The national recidivism rate for former prisoners is 62 per cent; for alumni of U-Casadh it is 27 per cent.
The project has its roots in Plunkett’s experience as a prison officer, which has left him with some firm views about criminal justice. “Locking people up is unnatural,” he says. “Sometimes it’s necessary, but 65-70 per cent of prisoners are nonviolent and shouldn’t be there.”
He tells me about the frustrations of prison life, how hurt and angry prisoners would lash out and how, because he was an aficionado of taekwondo and boxing, he was often put on the front line.
Source: Patrick Freyne, The Irish Times, 14/03/16
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