Hello,
A few weeks ago, I asked Gary Fulton (here at LandWorks in 2017/18) to write a blog.
Gary has written a brilliant and a hard-hitting piece, perhaps slightly longer than our usual blog, but all the better for that and a great personal insight that needs to be heard.
Thank you, Gary.
Chris
The Truth About Reoffending
Why my son — and so many others — never had a real second chance
We hear a lot about reoffending.
The word alone paints a picture of hardened criminals, wilfully committing the same crimes again and again. But the reality is rarely that simple — and I know that because I’ve lived it.
I served two years and three months of a four year and six-month sentence. I was one of the “lucky” ones — a stable life before my conviction, somewhere to go when I got out, and the support of family. Even then, the road back was lined with closed doors. For many others — including my son — the path is even steeper.
The Long Shadow of a Conviction
A conviction doesn’t end when you leave prison. It follows you everywhere — a label you can’t shake.
Until 2022, if your sentence was under four years, you had to declare it for seven years after release. Anything over four years? It was never considered “spent.” That meant one question — “Do you have any unspent criminal convictions?” — appeared everywhere:
- Insurance applications (car, home, life)
- Credit cards, loans, mortgages
- Rental agreements
- Job applications
- Visa forms for countries like the USA, Canada, and Australia
Answer “yes,” and brace yourself:
- Car insurance: two to three times more expensive
- Life insurance: far higher premiums
- Home insurance: inflated costs or outright refusal
- Credit: hard to get, expensive to keep
- Mortgages: nearly impossible
- Rentals: limited options
- Travel: restricted
- Jobs: many doors slammed shut
It’s more than paperwork. It’s a constant reminder: You are not trusted.
Two Very Different Roads
For someone with stability before prison — a home, savings, supportive friends — the road back is painful, but just about manageable. The bills sting. The job rejections hurt. The shame lingers. But you can, eventually, rebuild.
For others, it’s different. Imagine leaving prison clean, qualified, and determined to turn your life around — only to face this:
- No home
- No money
- Benefits take weeks
- Employers reject you before you’ve had a chance to speak
You grab a minimum-wage job, rent a tiny bedsit, pay triple insurance costs, and try to keep going. Then your boss finds out about your conviction: “Sorry, I have to let you go.”
Suddenly, the rent’s due. You’re back on the streets. Old friends offer easy money — through drugs.
The temptation is real. And so the cycle begins again.
My Son’s Struggle
My son’s story sits in that second, harsher category.
He had a home to return to, but drugs and alcohol were his downfall. Though he was raised well, he struggled with mild learning difficulties and was on the autistic spectrum.
In prison, I met many young men just like him — lads who never quite fit in, who masked their pain with substances. For them, prison felt more familiar than the outside world. Inside, they were understood. On the outside, they were misfits.
When my son got out, meaningful work was hard to find. Minimum-wage jobs felt pointless, especially when he faced inflated costs and endless rejection. Riding without insurance felt easier. Selling drugs felt easier than grinding in a job that led nowhere.
Whenever he was asked what he wanted in life, he’d say the same thing:
“I just want to be normal and happy.”
Despite all the support we gave him, three years ago, after a night mixing coke and downers, our son died.
“I Just Get Stuck”
I’ve wrestled with this. I’ve tried to understand why some people spiral into self-destruction — why they make the choices they do.
Support for young adults is woefully lacking. Opportunities for those who aren’t academic are few and far between. When people don’t fit into “normal,” they find those who accept them without judgement — people who live on the edges, too.
During my son’s first short prison sentence, he swore he’d turn things around. He meant it. For a few months, he was doing well. He stopped hanging out with old friends, stayed clean, applied for jobs.
But boredom crept in. Rejections piled up. One by one, the systems meant to help him led nowhere. Slowly, he was drawn back to what he knew — drugs, chaos, the fleeting high that made life tolerable.
Within a year, he was back inside. This time: just over 14 months, for a moment of madness while under the influence.
When he got out, he looked worn down but determined. We tried everything — helped with his CV, gave lifts to interviews, filled out endless forms for support schemes that went nowhere.
Each rejection chipped away at his confidence. He felt like he had “failure” stamped across his forehead.
He was bright in his own way — funny, kind, fiercely loyal. But the world wasn’t built for someone like him. It asked too much in the wrong places and valued none of what he had to offer.
He needed structure. He needed patience. He needed purpose.
What he got was insecure work, hollow check-ins, and a system that had already written him off.
Drugs were his coping mechanism. When the weight got too heavy, he used. And once he slipped, the spiral was fast. One wrong choice became three. A missed appointment. A fight. A relapse.
He didn’t want to live that way. He used to say:
“I’m not a bad person, Dad — I just get stuck.”
And he did. Again and again.
He Didn’t Fail — He Was Failed
When my son died, I didn’t just lose him.
I lost every version of the man he might have become — the person he could’ve been if life had been a bit kinder. If he’d had the right support. If someone had seen past the labels.
Grief doesn’t follow a straight line. Some days I’m angry — at the system, at the people who exploited him, even at him. Other days, I just miss him. His laugh. The way he sang in the kitchen like no one was listening.
But what I’ve come to believe is this:
People like my son don’t fail — they’re failed.
- Failed by overstretched services
- Failed by systems that punish difference
- Failed by a society that can’t imagine success outside the narrowest definition
If we truly want to stop losing our young people, we need more than sympathy.
We need trauma-informed systems.
We need education that fits different minds.
We need jobs that offer dignity — not just survival.
And we need to stop asking, “What’s wrong with them?”
Instead, we must ask:
“What happened to them?”
“How can we help them heal?”
A Step Forward — But Not Enough
In 2022, the law changed.
- Sentences between 1 and 4 years are now spent after 4 years
- Sentences over 4 years are spent after 7 years
(Serious sexual, violent, or terrorist offences are excluded — rightly so.)
It’s a step in the right direction — but it’s not enough.
Because still, too many walk out of prison only to find the world hasn’t made space for them. Still, they’re punished long after their sentence ends. Still, the system is a maze of closed doors.
If we’re serious about reducing reoffending, we must stop setting people up to fail the moment they walk free.
Until we do, we’ll keep losing lives like my son’s — not because they chose failure, but because we never offered them a real way back.
Gary
11th September 2025