Offenders learn to sing from same song sheet in fight against crime

Most are struggling with drug addiction or alcohol abuse. They chew

gum, glance nervously around, mutter among themselves or nip outside

for constant cigarette breaks. Few seem comfortable with their surroundings, especially when one of the speakers starts selecting people from the crowd to come up and sing on stage.

He is Richard McCann, the son of the first victim of Peter Sutcliffe, the Yorkshire Ripper, and a man who escaped a violent abusive childhood and a one-year prison sentence for supply of a controlled drug to forge a successful career as an author and motivational speaker. Mr McCann has been invited by West Yorkshire Police to address the 130-strong group of prolific and priority offenders who are involved in a pioneering pilot project developed alongside Justice Secretary Kenneth Clarke's call to combat the appalling reoffending rates and soaring prison population in England and Wales. The reoffending rate has doubled since the 1990s to 85,000, and with the prison population constantly rising, the Government is exploring alternatives to short-term jail sentences.

The participants have been specially targeted as people who commit a high proportion of crimes including burglary, drug dealing and shoplifting in the city, and for whom prison is not proving an effective deterrent.

Under the new scheme, called A Way Out, instead of short-term jail sentences, offenders will be given more intense help in the community, with varied education and employment opportunities, regular support getting off drugs and help rebuilding a normal life to break the cycle of reoffending where 60 per cent of former prisoners commit crimes within a year of leaving prison.

If successful in Leeds, the programme will be rolled out across West Yorkshire. But right now, nobody is thinking about that.

This group doesn't want to sing. "Don't worry, I'm only joking," says Mr McCann, as a few of the chosen audience start to rise uneasily from their chairs. "You see that embarrassed feeling you had right there, that was how I used to feel before I started a new life."

This is a relaxed event, with police officers present deliberately not wearing any uniform or badges. But there is a serious subtext. Everybody who has attended has signed an agreement acknowledging that, if they offend again, the courts will be made aware they were given this chance and they will be sentenced accordingly. It's hoped that this combination of carrot and stick will inspire participants to make a success of the programme. Many have already welcomed it as a much-needed change of direction.

"I have been basically behind bars since 1992 mainly for burglary and drug dealing", says Mark Buttery, 36, of Bramley, who was released from his latest two-and-a-half year prison sentence one week ago. "It

doesn't work. I would go to jail, spend a few years there and come out to an impossible life with not enough help, and just get back into crime again. I've been free for a week now, and I feel I just want to go back to prison because it is much easier in there. I'm institutionalised. This is what happens when they just lock you up."

Dewsbury couple David Markwood, a 38-year-old recovering heroin addict, and Amanda McLaughlan, 29, who has been an alcoholic since 18 but has recently stopped drinking, are also hoping for a new start through the programme.

Miss McLaughlan said: "We are at the stage where we want to sort our lives out. We have both served short-term prison sentences for

shoplifting. It makes it a lot harder when you get back out and you don't get enough help sorting everything out again. It makes people so much more likely to re-offend. But this is great and an amazing help to us."

Detective Chief Inspector Lisa Griffin, of West Yorkshire Police, who is spearheading the new programme, is quietly confident about its potential success – which will be measured on participants' reoffending rates.

"The people we have identified on the programme are constantly committing crimes; their levels of offending are just unacceptable. We need to take a fresh approach to this. The prisons are at full capacity. We have to look at alternative options and ways of changing their behaviour.

"We don't think for one minute that coming to an event like this is going to miraculously change people's lives overnight. There are a lot of factors to overcome."

They may not be much good at singing, but if all goes to plan, West Yorkshire's serial criminals could prove the star turn in the national rehabilitation revolution.