You would not expect to find rabbits, chickens and geese within a prison’s walls, but in the Garden of Serenity at HMP Dovegate, Uttoxeter, you’ll come across all of these farmyard animals. There is also a greenhouse, pond and sitting area, as well as flowerbeds and a vegetable allotment, complete with poly tunnel.
The animals are here on account of their therapeutic value, and the prisoners spend time nurturing them. Neil Gilbert, Horticulture Tutor at Dovegate, reports that the men respond well to the responsibility of caring for the pets: “We’ve seen prisoners with a history of self harm go for more than 18 months without self-mutilation,” he says. Prisoners from the Healthcare Department visit the gardens at weekends in order to spend time with the animals. Most of these prisoners have mental health problems and it is considered that spending time with the animals provides them with some alternative therapy.
Skills for life
All the vegetables grown in the eight large beds go to the kitchen. Last year we provided £3,000 of produce for the kitchen; this year we aim to send about £5,000 worth. Any surplus produce is sent to people in need in the community outside: we contacted Marchington Parish Council for their Harvest Festival, provided a special needs school at Burton on Trent with hanging baskets, and supplied vegetables for a local care home.
The prisoners seem to enjoy honing their newfound gardening skills, which may prove useful once they leave prison. One prisoner, currently serving a life sentence, has plans to apply his skills to set up a nursery on release. He is currently engaging in RHS level 2 (a recognised qualification in horticulture) and is developing well.
The garden is an unusual and welcome addition to the Therapeutic Prison (TP), which houses up to 200 of Dovegate’s 1,000-plus Category B Training Prisoners, all of who are serving long-term sentences of four years or more. The men, who volunteer themselves for the TP, live in Democratic Therapeutic Communities of 40. They vote in their own chairmen and vice-chairman and manage their own budgets for items like cleaning materials.
Caring for the community
Before entering the TP, each prisoner goes through a 12-week assessment period. They are screened for criminogenic risk factors, cognitive functioning, personality traits, psychopathic traits and a range of psychological factors using a psychometric battery. The staff assessing them make sure they are genuinely motivated, capable of responding positively to therapy, and ready to enter the communities they will belong to for a minimum of 18 months, usually longer. At the end of the assessment process, an assessment report will be produced, bringing together all the psychometric assessments, behavioural observations, psychological tests and static risk assessments. At the end of this report the prisoner is given a number of treatment targets, designed to focus the intervention on reducing their risk of re-offending in the future. They take this report with them into their Therapeutic Community and it is reviewed regularly, assessing their progress on the identified treatment targets.
The group dynamic is integral to the success of the therapy, as the prisoners support each other and, if necessary, vote out those who are unwilling or unable to come to terms with the environment. ‘Culture carriers’ are appointed to help new members settle in, while the ‘elders’ of the community, who are drawing towards the end of their time in therapy, helps others understand what to expect and support them.
Open discussion
The prisoners are essentially each other’s therapists. They gather every weekday morning in a ‘thoughts and feelings check’, to discuss the business of the day and how each community member is feeling. Three times a week they meet in small groups of 10 to talk about their offending behaviour, past experiences, thoughts, emotions and current behaviour, and no subject is taboo. This can present a huge emotional challenge for those who have never shared such intimate detail about their feelings, troubled family histories or the crimes they have committed. Twice a week there is a full community meeting where all 40 residents, along with the staff members who make up the community, meet to discuss any issues – antisocial behaviours are challenged by everyone. This can be a much more daunting and difficult process than some more typical prison consequences of anti-social behaviour.
The aim is to promote a culture of honesty and familial co-dependence, reducing bullying and aiding rehabilitation by encouraging the men to explore and accept the consequences of their actions. Complementary therapies of art, drama and music run alongside the talking therapy.
Ongoing change
Surrey University carried out a six-year study to assess behavioural change in individuals and the effect of therapy on recidivism rates. Although it is too early to draw concrete conclusions, they found that in the TP, prisoners performed better in impulsivity tests and were significantly less likely to engage in confrontation. The adjudication levels (where prisoners come before a judge on charges of bad behaviour while incarcerated) were also lower than those of the ‘normal’ prison.
