Outreach Rehabilitation Approaches for BAME and Muslim offenders – what does a Community Rehabilitation Company really teach, when it cherry-picks and coaches vulnerable human beings for payment by results secretly into renewed law-benders?
Some key findings of a new report by the ICJ,
by Sigrid Countess von Galen
Accordingly to prison officers and offenders BAME and Muslim offenders are especially left long-term to their own devices and are least helped and considered for ongoing support and mentoring in terms of reintegration and rehabilitation.
– Interviews revealed that support provided by smaller initiatives or charities or individual professionals or volunteers was often not even offered or sabotaged or ignored and potential clients not informed nor referred, or multi-agency Rehabilitation in various ways interrupted or corrupted.
– It emerged from interviews with prison officers, offenders and their families that in some instances especially BAME and Muslim offenders were encapsulated in a vicious downhill spiral of reoffending, as their 'career' started from a young age, and the grooming process into organised criminality begins often in teenagehood, and for many even in childhood due to various contributing social factors.
– BAME and Muslim offenders reluctantly but nonetheless accurately described a 'culture of vulture' secret societies ruling secretly communities under abuse of authority and of impunity 'offering' even reward systems for crimes and for criminal career climbs through even taking the responsibility for another (high profile and white) offender's crime to build up a portfolio of ruthlessness and criminal or terrorist speciality!
– BAME and Muslim offenders are often being targeted or recruited covertly early on in their school environment by members of freemasonry and templars and other occult organised secret and criminal death cult societies.
– They were, accordingly to statements, identified and groomed for all sorts of criminality and abuse at first by 'benevolent' appearing adults and corrupt social workers, teachers, receptionists and school secretaries, or church wardens and charity workers.
– An additional obstacle for Rehabilitation and reintegration poses also the reality of the impunity tentacles of freemasonry and other such secret society spiderwebs', who abuse authority also to pick those charities and organisations and agencies that are infiltrated or run even in a majority by their secret members, who then sabotage as many Approaches for a successful Rehabilitation as they possibly can.
- Gangs and extremism cells are often financed via disguised paymasters from lobby groups, who use the members' culture of ritual knives and path of blood and violence for hiring them as mercenaries for white collar interests enforced by organised crime. A risk taking of being arrested and charged with crimes is by many considered an occupational hazard and even seen as a ladder climb to a career in organised crime.
– Many BAME and Muslim offenders expressed frustration and resignation at the taboo of voicing the real issues preventing them from escaping the 'spiderweb of evil'. One officer summed up the reality that others echoed:'How can they [the offenders] have faith in justice, when they recognise in the courtroom the truly evil and criminal master minds in a corrupt judge, a senior police rank, a prosecutor and/or lawyer/QC and witness, who even groomed the offender first into abuse and drug consume and dealing and then via blackmail into evermore organised criminality via their freemasonry lodge or occult circles.
The lads identified the voices, smell and diction and laugh of the real culprits, who then decide about the offenders fate!
I am not saying the offenders are innocent, as they did commit the crimes or at least were part of a joint enterprise and dangerous association but it is the Freemasons and others, who frame or even kill the good police officers, who want to help to gather all evidence properly and to get to the bottom of things, and who also volunteer for mentoring themselves!
Many offenders don't get the support they deserve and require, as they try to stay aloof from those corrupt officials with secret affiliations, and they are afraid of repercussions in the probation period, as in their experience their peers, who had joined
Freemasonry or became mercenaries for the old Templars infrastructure and system and had committed even murder and/or took the blame for another member of their dangerous association
went even free, as witnesses were intimidated and it was boasted that even juries were infiltrated! And their crimes had been covered up or evidence omitted!'
– It is notable also that BAME and Muslim prison and police officers stated that the real problems and issues in the law enforcement and multi-agencies are not addressed, as far as secret societies are concerned, and that ALL officers, whom they know to have a secret society affiliation, are in one way or another themselves sooner or later involved in abuse of authority and in varying degrees of organised criminality, as they become secretly mercenaries and "agents of evil".
– In various interviews BAME and Muslim officers stated that they were on various occasions approached by corrupt senior ranks or by other high ranking agency or law freemasonry members to join a lodge or to set one up themselves 'to become part of a lucrative mercenary operation' based on blackmail, bribery and abuse of authority and of government property and seals'. One officer said in his testimony that he 'was framed by his colleague with bribed false witnesses and suspended' because he had found out that his 'colleague ran his own organised crime ring with the help of a bishop's impunity and a high court judge' s seal, and masterminded anything from illegal ivory trade over drugs and firearms and stolen church treasures dealing to ritual murder and resulting body parts and organ trade and whoremongering, all on his beat via the local and international networks of his charges. He also arranged for whistleblowers to be intimidated and threatened and attacked and to be slandered and falsely shamed and even for victims as 'unstable' or 'eccentric' to be maliciously labelled and thus discredited. He had the help of the corrupt Elders on his beat, who were remnants of an old and regrouped organised crime and freemasonry/templar network, who had even strategically been gradually placed in council houses under abuse of authority, so that collective or gang stalking was a useful additional instrumernt evil to all of them, as each ran their own coven of blackmail and illegal dealings to paedophilia as well.'
'abbreviation. British. Black, Asian, and minority ethnic (used to refer to members of non-white communities in the UK). BAMEstudents are making good use of higher education opportunities. Around 20% of the teachers are from BAME backgrounds.
BAME – definition of BAME in English from the Oxford Dictionary
Outcomes of a research-based evaluation of ReachingOut, a model for the rehabilitation of BAME and Muslim offenders.
School of Social Work Care and Community, University of Central Lancashire. September 2014 – February 2016.
UCLan Project Investigator: Dr Christine Hough
Arooj: Tariq Mahmood, Mohammad Hanif
Introduction.
This paper discusses the outcomes of the proposed evaluation of ReachingOut, an offender rehabilitation programme tailored to the needs of BAME Muslim offenders in North West England. The programme was delivered by a community-based Third Sector Organisation (TSO) Arooj, who have developed their own mentoring model for the rehabilitation and reintegration of BAME and Muslim offenders/ex-offenders and their families. This model was to be evaluated over a period of twelve months. The start of the evaluation coincided with the major restructuring of the probation services, as part of the Transforming Rehabilitation (TR) agenda and this played a part in the failure of the project, because it was not possible to collect any primary research. The events that conspired to thwart the evaluation are the subject of an academic paper (submitted to the European Probation Journal for peer review), which analyses critically the policies and systems that underpin TR, with reference to the literature and continuing neo-liberal governmental approaches to cost cutting across public services..
Arooj's three stage model of rehabilitation.
Since their inception, Arooj's work in the rehabilitation of BAME and Muslim offenders has been based on their own model of mentoring and support. This comprises three stages.
Stage One, at which the mentors build and establish a trusting relationship with the offenders whilst they are in prison, in order to set in place lines of communication and support between them and their families. Arooj provides an impartial service that is independent of any part of the CJS system and is often the only Asian support group working in a prison. This factor is significant to their clients whose perception is that the Arooj mentors support them individually, rather than as part of the 'system' of rehabilitation and resettlement that operates inside prisons.
At Stage Two of the model Arooj will refer their clients to multi-agency groups (such as drugs and alcohol support) for their health/mental needs; provide advice and guidance to secure employment and intervene with their families to encourage their re-integration and acceptance back into the family network.
Stage Three is lifelong and may endure indefinitely, for as long as the offender and their family require Arooj's support.
Key outcomes of the evaluation of ReachingOut.
The policies and processes of the government's Transforming Rehabilitation arrangements served to constrain Arooj in their role as a provider of rehabilitation support to BAME and Muslim ex-offenders at a local level. During the first six months of the project, Arooj received no referrals of ex-offenders, from regional offender managers, for their community-based services.
The Payment by Results (PbR) system of rewards to the Community Rehabilitation Company (CRC) providers is likely to encourage them to 'cherry-pick' those clients who are more amenable to desisting from re-offending, rather than those whose needs are more complex. This may have been an influential factor in the decisions not to refer offenders to Arooj.
The values-based, advocacy role of Third Sector Organisations (TSOs) such as Arooj is in danger of being eroded by the modus operandi of the new Community Rehabilitation Companies (CRCs). This is because of the 'marketised' business model they now conform to, which provided the basis for the CRCs taking part in the competitive bid tender for the contracts to provide probation service support to offenders who have had sentences of less than twelve months. In the medium to long term, the pressing need to cut costs and provide 'value for money' may result in a 'quick fix' approach to reducing reoffending amongst medium to low risk ex-offenders, rather than addressing the more costly, transformative issues of assessment, diagnosis and desistance from re-offending.
These outcomes reflect the negative impact of the policies and processes of the government's TR arrangements on the community-based, rehabilitation support work of a local Third Sector Organisation. These policies and processes served to restrict and, effectively, prevent Arooj from delivering their rehabilitation services to BAME and Muslim ex-offenders at a local level. A combination of factors, including the uncertainty of the future roles of the former probation officers 'inherited' by the local Community Rehabilitation Company (CRC) and the sheer speed with which the TR changes were imposed upon them conspired to subjugate Arooj's role from that of an established community-based service provider to that of an organisation 'in waiting' – with no referrals.
During the first six months of the project we were expecting Arooj's rehabilitation services to be 'launched' within the operation of the local CRC – but this never happened. Firstly, at the outset of the proposed evaluation, the CRC suggested that Arooj's three stage model of rehabilitation of support be reduced to just one point of contact, which corresponded to Stage 2 of the original model. This meant that offenders would only be referred to them after their release from prison. As a consequence, Arooj were unable to select respondents for the proposed evaluation because they did not have the opportunity to establish relationships with offenders whilst they in prison, prior to their release. Secondly, at the commencement of the evaluation, the local CRC incorporated Arooj into a temporary, pilot partnership of local Third Sector Organisations and rehabilitation providers, but gave no official guidance to the other partners as to how they might refer any BAME and Muslim ex-offenders for Arooj's specialist services. In the event two BAME Mulsim offender referrals were made to Arooj, but the first referral relapsed into drug taking within ten days of his release from prison and made no contact with Arooj and the second chose not to engage with their rehabilitation services.
The most significant impact of these outcomes of the project has been to prevent the planned research-based evaluation of Arooj's rehabilitation model of support; this also meant that no offenders/ex-offenders had the opportunity to benefit from Arooj's support in their resettlement and reintegration during the time of the proposed evaluation. In the absence of any referrals, we were unable to recruit any research respondents or collect the primary data required for the evaluation.
Reflections.
The outcomes of the ReachingOut project are the result of a very small-scale, regionally-based project and therefore cannot provide the basis for any general assertions about the impact of the TR agenda nationally. However, the fact that this evaluation of their rehabilitation model was thwarted by factors linked directly to the new TR arrangements, will have a profound impact on Arooj's future work as a TSO. How and where their expertise in this area develops will depend on the direction they choose to take in response to these outcomes.
The outcomes of this project, which was funded by the (former) local Probation Trust and the National Offender Management Services (NOMS), indicate clearly that the future of the rehabilitation of low-medium risk offenders under the TR arrangements is dangerously poised in these early days of the part-privatisation of the probation services. The factors at play here include cutbacks being made by the CRCs, which include redundancies of offender managers and the termination of existing contracts with the smaller TSOs. The erosion of the role of small third sector organisations in this new landscape is probably inevitable and will very likely presage the end of the road for many who will simply not be able to continue with their work if the CRCs choose to offer contracts to only the larger, national charities and social enterprise organisations.
Dr Christine Hough
School of Social Work, Care and Community
University of Central Lancashire
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