8 February 2024 –
LandWorks was recently visited by Richard Torne, a journalist from South Hams Newspapers. Richard spent the morning with us exploring the site, learning about our resettlement project, and talking to trainees to hear about their difficult lives at first hand, and their hopes for the future. He shared his experiences in an insightful article headlined ‘The South Hams Charity Transforming Lives’, which opened with the words, “Dartington based charity LandWorks might be on to something.”
During his visit, Richard asked LandWorks Project Director, Chris Parsons about the challenges faced by schemes like LandWorks at a time of public service cuts and moves to increase custodial sentences. Chris replied:
“There needs to be a debate in this country about punishment versus resettlement. Do we need to keep punishing people? Surely the moment of punishment is when your time is denied to you, whether you are sent to prison or have a community sentence. The rest should be about helping to rebuild lives, because I can guarantee nobody who’s attended this place set out to be a bad person; they didn’t want to harm their community. It’s a brave community that opens its arms and says, ‘you can come back in now’. That’s partly what Landworks is trying to do.”
You can read the full article here.