‘So, tell me, what would have stopped you from stealing when you were an addict?’
Keeley gives me a wry smile and her eyes twinkle. Her look says to me ‘you already know exactly what I’m going to say.’
‘Nothing. If I wanted to steal from a store, nothing would have stopped me.’
I did know she was going to say that. Of course I did. We’d spent the last 30 minutes talking about the pain of addiction and the all-consuming desperation to escape the agony of withdrawal. Once a heroin addict is rattling (street term for withdrawing), there is only one thing that will stop them from stealing to fund the next fix – death. Addiction doesn’t discriminate, and anyone can fall victim to it, given the right (or wrong) set of circumstances. What follows, is often a continual loop of shoplifting and prison – the proverbial revolving door.
So, what should be done with prolific shoplifters who spend their lives negotiating addiction and jail? There seems to be a fairly widespread public opinion that offenders continue to steal because prison sentences aren’t harsh enough. The punishments aren’t severe enough in this country. People who continue to steal on a daily basis are hurting our businesses and the economy. Shopworkers are abused and there must be retribution. The offenders must be held accountable. Of course they should. But the question I’ve been looking at, is ‘does this actually stop the offending?’
According to the ex-offenders I spoke with, punishment simply didn’t work for them, because the core issue – addiction - wasn’t resolved. You can punish the offender and get justice for the victim, but with an unresolved addiction problem, the message I’ve received loud and clear, is that offender is highly likely to keep offending.
Over the last couple of weeks, I’ve visited three different counties to look at their open to recovery (O2R) programmes, for prolific shoplifters who have been offered a chance of rehabilitative treatment. My aim was to find out ‘what works’ and see if the expansion of similar schemes can be replicated across the country. Of the many people I’ve spoken to, they’ve all said the same thing,
Prison didn’t work for me.
‘So why is that? Why didn’t 22 stints in jail and a total of 8 years behind bars serve as any sort of deterrent?’ I ask James Kelly, a successful participant of the pilot O2R scheme in the West Midlands.
‘I started using drugs when I was 8 years old. I was taking heroin by age 14. Once you’re an addict, you just accept that prison time is a part of that life. As soon as you get out, you start using again. You get clean in prison, but you’re not taught about recovery. The second you get out, you hit overwhelm. You’re given 5 or 6 appointments you need to get to in one day and expected to just sort it out on your own. So, you just end up using again.’
James went on to be supported by the Nottingham O2R pilot due to relocation and was then funded to receive trauma therapy. He now works as a Substance Use Practitioner for Clean Slate Criminal Justice Substance Use Service and collaborates the with O2R project in Nottingham, focussing on engagement with prolific offenders and wrap-around care to encourage addicts to participate in the programme. The recovery workers often start engagement during an offender’s prison stay, via legal visits and calls, to establish a connection and build a therapeutic relationship. They’re then collected at the gate and driven to all their appointments, ensuring they have someone to hand-hold through the overwhelming process of being released from prison, often with no housing, belongings, or anyone else to help them. O2R workers like James then support reintegration into the community for many months after release.
Speaking to Jo Baxter, a police officer and instigator of the O2R project in Nottingham (whose compassion for offenders in recovery is infectious) it’s evident to me that all of the recovery workers take on the role of ‘professional parent.’ Their clients have often never had a loving or stable home environment, and they’ve never learned the basic skills of just functioning in the world as an adult. For a recovering addict who has been taking heroin since they were a child, a day of shoplifting feels normal, but something as simple as opening a bank account or going for a job interview, can be an overwhelming and incomprehensible task.
I went visit to Lindale Recovery Service in Birmingham – the origins of the O2R project for West-Midlands. I spoke with a group of men during one of the many recovery meetings they host daily. What I found most striking, was the ubiquitous sense of contrition from everyone in the room: the shame felt by everyone for their previous lives filled with crime, was palpable. With drug abuse behind them, their moral compass was back intact, including the shame of the devastation they’d caused in the lives of so many.
On another visit to Portsmouth, I went to visit Liz Tooes, a Business Crime Navigator for their Integrated Offender Management unit. She spends a lot of her time at The Registry – a temporary housing solution as part of their Rough Sleepers Pathway. Liz was given the High Sherrif award for her work in the community and often receives more referrals than she can cope with – a consequence of word-of-mouth reviews from people she has helped into recovery.
‘I feel like their mum a lot of the time! They rely on me for a lot, but these people need their hand held through everything at first. They can’t get clean on their own. They need wrap-around support, and it can take a long time just to get people to even trust you.’
Portsmouth, West-Mids and Nottingham all run on slightly different models, and are funded and assisted by multiple different charities, police, councils, OPCC’s and businesses. Each of these projects continues to grow - as the word gets out they are making a difference - and new partners are continually offering to join the schemes. In West-Mids, what started with a police pot of just £14k has been transformed into a network of partners who all collaborate to offer help to those who need it, and the results are staggering.
For Keeley, a career criminal who started taking heroin at 12 years old, she is now 2.5 years clean. She now spends her time giving back to the community and assisting others in the fight against addiction. The impact on Keeley and those around her is monumental. Her life has transformed in a way she never felt possible. But one of the most sobering aspects I found about her recovery, is the impact on the business community.
Keeley’s drug addiction was costing £700 a day. To fund this, she needed to steal far more in order to realise the value of the stolen goods. Keeley would steal between £4k and £7k of goods per day. That’s almost 2 million a year. A staggering sum of money. 2.5 years sober, the maths speaks for itself. The cost of specifically rehabilitating Keeley is difficult to quantify, but it’s fair to say that the cost of treatment is dwarfed by the money lost to businesses by shoplifting, the cost of her being housed in prison and the drugs money that’s no longer going to the streets. It terms of cost-benefit analysis, you won’t find a bigger return on investment, especially when the Home Office estimates that approximately 70% of shoplifting is committed by those in addiction.
On face value, offering prolific adult offenders compassion and treatment could seem galling to those businesses who have lost millions and the staff who have been assaulted by addicts with a desperate need to escape their clutches, but I’d challenge people to focus on the outcome that everyone wants; safer streets, and an end to shoplifting. Showing compassion for offenders isn’t an insult to victims and businesses – it’s not mutually exclusive. Compassion for victims isn’t lost and the impact on businesses and its people are recognised in the drive to stop offending. When an addict shoplifter is rehabilitated, there are countless members of society who will never become victims.
Victims. Offenders. They’re nice tidy pigeonholes. But what the last couple of weeks has shown me, is that they are anything but. When I was talking to James last week, and looking him in the eyes, the depths of his pain were easy to see. It’s hard to look at James and see an ex-offender. Deeply compassionate and with an overwhelming desire to help other people, he wants to give back to society and pay it forward. The care and help he has received is being passed on to others, including businesses. You’ll struggle to find a more knowledgeable subject matter expert in shoplifting, than someone who spent a lifetime honing the skills to commit the offence. James often gives security advice to shops and could realise a huge income if he set up his own consultancy business, but James refuses to take a penny, even though the advice he can offer is invaluable.
‘How can I take payment from the people I used to steal from? It’s not right.’
Solid proof that for James, stealing was never about the money – it was about the need. The need to stave off withdrawal. And the need to block out trauma. Because what it’s easy to forget, is that James isn’t just an ex-offender. He was also a child victim. I look at James and I can see the 8-year-old cowering in the corner at home, as his front door was smashed in by the police. The child clinging to his father and being ripped from his arms as he was arrested and taken to jail for burglary. James doesn’t have one or two adverse childhood experiences, he has most of them. A wave of trauma, for which he is still receiving ongoing psychological help. When did James stop being a victim and become an offender? When he started using drugs aged 8? Clearly not. What about when he was taking heroin at 14? It’s a sliding scale from victim to offender. And make no mistake, James was a child victim who was failed by society. He wasn’t helped when he needed it, and he inevitably became a product of his environment. If I’d have been raised in the same way, I don’t think I’d still be here. The grit and resolve needed to survive that life is monumental, and now, James is using the same determination to help other people.
From an NBCC perspective, I’d like to see other police forces around the country set up their own O2R projects - not to replace traditional routes such as CBO’s and prison, but to support them – so when offenders are released, they are supported into recovery instead of the revolving door. The O2R model is there to be copied, improved on and expanded. Compassion aside, you only have to look at the extent of Keeley’s offending to see the massive results that can be achieved from even rehabilitating a small amount of offenders. Whether you’re driven by compassion or results, it’s a win-win.
For more information on O2R projects around the country, please contact Rachael.Rowlands@cityoflondon.police.uk
