Why Airborne should get a second chance

STAFF and campaigners fighting to save the Airborne Initiative made an emotional appeal to the Scottish Executive yesterday, in a bid to rescue the pioneering project from closure.

Team leaders and graduates from the so-called boot camp gathered in Edinburgh where they urged ministers to reconsider their controversial decision to close the unit, with the loss of 26 jobs.

Eleven of Scotland’s most prolific young criminals are now back on the streets after the Executive withdrew almost 600,000 of funding from the centre at Braidwood House, Lanarkshire. Speaking to a meeting of MSPs yesterday, John Paul Crook, 26, one of the graduates from the nine-week residential course, insisted youngsters like him deserved a second chance.

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He said: "It’s made me look to the future and put the past behind me. Since I left Airborne in July, I’ve been working and now I’m ready to start my own business.

"I just hope Airborne is given another chance and is able to give more people like myself the opportunity to do something with their lives."

The furore surrounding the closure of Airborne is particularly significant in the light of figures published this week that show Scotland’s prison population is at an all-time high. The number of inmates rose by 2 per cent between 2002 and 2003, from 6,404 to 6,523. Critics say that the move smacks of hypocrisy and contradicts the Executive’s high-profile policy on alternatives to custody - a key plank of the justice department.

"Ministers have consistently said that they want to direct offenders away from custody," said a senior Executive source. "One minute they are talking about alternatives to custody, the next minute they’re closing them down. It makes no sense whatsoever."

Speaking at the meeting yesterday, Clive Fairweather, the former chief inspector of Scotland’s prisons, said that some of the graduates on the course had committed more than 200 offences, but Airborne had helped them turn their lives around.

He stressed the project was more effective in preventing re-offending than prison.

"Some of them have as many as 270 offences. If you let those guys go back on the streets to commit more crime, that is a lot of offences and a lot of damage to society," he said.

"We are saying to ministers, ‘Could you possibly not think again or at least think about a review some time up ahead’.

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"It seems daft to me, when you’re up against it with the prison population, to discard one of the answers."

The decision to close the unit has been described as perverse, given the high risk of recidivism by inmates on their release. A previous batch of 21 youths on the programme had 250 convictions and 80 years in jail between them.

Critics believe the project was axed after ministers were embarrassed by Chancers, a fly-on-the-wall television documentary which showed inmates taking drugs and absconding.

Although the Executive insisted the centre had failed to perform, insiders believe the decision to close was political and linked to the key policies on youth crime proposed by Jack McConnell, the First Minister.

Earlier this week, a national campaign to save Airborne was launched by some of the country’s senior figures. In an open letter to The Scotsman, the group of 23 appealed directly to the First Minister in an attempt to rescue Airborne.

Supporters of the unit for young offenders include Lord Prosser, the retired High Court judge; the peer and retired businessman, Lord Macfarlane of Bearsden; Richard Holloway, the former Bishop of Edinburgh, and the author, Ian Rankin.

One Airborne team leader, Stuart Girvan, 29, said breaking the news to recruits that the course was to be scrapped was one of the most difficult things the staff had ever done.

"To hear that we were being disbanded was devastating," he explained. "This is an investment by the Scottish people. To be thrown on the scrapheap is such a shame.

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"JP [Mr Crook] would be in jail, and yet now he is a taxpayer and a good member of society."

Despite reassurances from the Executive, there are growing concerns that the closure of Airborne will leave a gap in the range of non-custodial options available to the courts.

Although day programmes are on offer, Airborne was one of the few intensive residential facilities to address offending behaviour.

Earlier this week, it emerged that Airborne was the subject of a positive report by Scottish Executive inspectors just weeks before it was closed down by ministers.

A leaked report seen by The Scotsman, which ministers never made public, referred to a list of improvements implemented by Airborne which were described as encouraging.

Despite the changes, the facility was closed within weeks.

Robin Harper, a Green Party MSP, has tabled a parliamentary motion which was signed by 18 MSPs, and insiders say support for the programme is growing by the day.

"What is disappointing, is the lack of support from Labour," said an MSP. "There is a sense of growing discontent, but whether they are prepared to defy the Executive is another thing altogether."

Last night, a spokesman for the Executive insisted there would be no 11th-hour reprieve for Airborne, and the project did not provide value for money.

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He said: "The decision by ministers not to continue funding Airborne was a final decision made on the basis of value for money and effectiveness.

"We don’t dispute that Airborne has had a positive impact on the lives of some young people, but there have been too few cases at a disproportionate cost."

Nine weeks changed a life

JP HAD been in and out of Barlinnie more times than he cares to remember.

It’s all a bit hazy now, mainly because his addiction to alcohol had almost wiped out the memory of his convictions for drink driving, and the short stretches in prison that followed.

Low Moss prison, Polmont Young Offenders’ Institution and ‘Bar-L’, as Barlinnie is known by its inmates, are just a few of the places with which he became familiar.

Now 26, John Paul Crook has put that life behind him and believes the nine-week course at the Airborne Initiative for young offenders helped him turn things around.

"I’d gone off the rails," admitted the warehouse worker who lives in Broxburn, West Lothian.

"I was drink driving, speeding, driving whilst disqualified - you name it. I had a fascination with cars and I was addicted to driving.

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"The problems started when I was drinking too much. I could take two or three bottles of Buckfast, and then I was going out on the roads with my mates."

Cruising the streets with his friends and ‘playing chicken’ in their souped-up Escorts and Cavaliers became the norm.

Not once did he think about the consequences of his actions.

"I didn’t see anything wrong in it. If anything, I was convinced the drink made me a better driver.

"Sometimes we’d have a race, and we’d drive backwards to see how fast the car would go. We were lucky no-one was killed."

The Airborne graduate, who is about to launch his own business, is among dozens of youngsters thrown a lifeline by the project which helps rehabilitate some of the country’s most persistent offenders.

He is in no doubt about the benefits of courses like Airborne.

He says: "In jail, they just locked the door and forgot about you. You were thrown in with people who could get you into even more trouble. At Airborne, you were forced to talk about what you’d done.

"In prison, there was always the temptation to fall back in with the wrong crowd."

TANYA THOMPSON

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