Hello,
It’s the summer holidays. South Devon is beautiful, sunny and bustling. People are just popping in to visit LandWorks, non-stop!
Often, they completely miss the shop and start wondering around the site looking lost (we are revisiting our signage).
I regularly intervene and politely say that in general we are not open to ad-hoc visits, adding… “We work with people who have just left prison or are at risk of going to prison.”
Probably about 90% of folk then head (often quite quickly) straight to the exit and our shop.
Not today. This couple stood their ground, exclaiming rather loudly, “CRIMINALS!”
Then Mr Visitor asked, “Why don’t you do something to help the likes-of-us, we’re 70!”
I replied (a well-rehearsed response) that by stopping just one person going to prison we save all of us around £50K/year. Better still, getting somebody back into a job they start paying tax and NI. I added, as another example, (and I don’t use this one much) that one man before coming here had shoplifted £1.3 million from his local Sainsburys and that had stopped!
Mike (we were now on first name terms) suddenly said that he had been to prison. Pauline (his wife) raised her eyebrows and informs me that Mike was a daft joker, well known for ‘it’ in Yorkshire, and had not been to prison.
But he wasn’t joking about the next part… firing a few stinging questions…
“You lot are just government funded.”
I replied simply, “No we are not,” and then explained about the importance of our shop and product sales, bringing in around 25% of our income.
“Aye, but it doesn’t work,” Mike said with feeling.
I explained that our reoffending rate is below 6%.
“You just take the easy ones though, that’s all you do,” came the accusation.
That was it!
I felt my hackles going up. I am so fed up with this question, twelve years on and still it gets trotted out. I knew I was a bit angry. Mostly, I think cross with myself that I still had not explained this more clearly to the whole world, or at least a small part of Yorkshire.
Well, I was going to now.
“Come with me, I’m going to give you a tour and were going to meet everyone here.”
The workshop was pounding away and everyone stopped to greet our visitors. Mike and Pauline were genuinely moved by the chat.
Then I introduce Graham (our brilliant woodwork manager), who immediately asks Mike “Don’t I know you? I recognise your face. Didn’t we meet in prison?”
Oh heck, I thought… and before Mike could form another comedic prisoner impersonation, I stepped in! I explain that at LandWorks it doesn’t matter where you come from (I thought about joking, even Yorkshire, but didn’t). It’s about who you are today and where you are going.
As we headed back to the shop I explained the full facts about ‘the easy ones’, our referrals with statistics (recently gathered) from the last 12 years…
Those with serious adverse childhood experiences… over 94%
Significant adult trauma (imprisonment, witnessing extreme violence, death etc)… 88%
Lifestyle (drugs, poor mental health, chaotic living etc) … 83%
Vulnerability (e.g., protect themselves from exploitation) … 78%
I could have gone on, but I could tell they had understood that our cohort were not ‘easy ones’.
We had reached the shop and Pauline announced that she was keen to spend some of “Mike’s brass”. But before entering, Mike asked, “When will you open a LandWorks in Yorkshire?”
“We’re working on it,” I said.
Chris
31st July 2025