In his latest article for The Guardian, Mark revisits his concerns over the Independent Safeguarding Authority, highlighting that its vetting scheme will bar the right people from helping offenders.
Read the full article at www.guardian.co.uk.
In his latest article for The Guardian, Mark talks about the idea of power-sharing in prison, highlighting prison councils as “an opportunity for the heart to talk to the head. Staff and prisoners will unite to express their views. They will offer a channel for the hidden people at society’s extremities to articulate how they can help, and be helped, to change”.
Read the full article at www.guardian.co.uk.
I went to Glastonbury this year for the first time in a long time. It’s hard to admit that I sloped off early, particularly because everyone else was having fun. Maybe that’s one reason I felt so isolated. Everyone seemed to be making the experience more intense by looking at each other and identifying with the good time they were having. I couldn’t seem to do that and so I got more and more detached.
I was sixteen in 1987 when I first went to Glastonbury in a battered old Mini with my girlfriend and a bloke who was a titch and was therefore called Titch. We didn’t have a driving licence between us and the Mini overheated all the way down the motorway. We kept pulling into service stations to refill the radiator. When we arrived, with £30 worth of cannabis hidden in the back, it was time to bring out the cannabis and hide the car instead. So we drove it into a field, pushed it up to a hedge and covered it with branches.
In his latest article for The Guardian, Mark talks about the Baby P case, and the mirror it holds up to all of us in our “dysfunctional society breeding dysfunctional individuals who breed still more”.
Read the full article at www.guardian.co.uk.
In his latest article for The Guardian Mark voices his very deep concerns over the government’s formation of the Independent Safeguarding Authority: a shadowy organisation that seems set to exercise powers of judge and jury in determining the future prospects of anyone with a less-than squeaky-clean past.
Read the full article at www.guardian.co.uk
In a new article for The Guardian, Mark discusses the problems faced by ex-offenders with limited choices and resources in the face of the often tough rules imposed on them on release from prison.
Writing for the Times Educational Supplement, Hannah Frankel talked to Mark about his background and the choices and decisions that have led him to where he is today:
Mark Johnson was eight years old when he started to see a psychiatrist about his violent tendencies. That was the same year he first got drunk. Three years on he took heroin in a squat.
His descent into a world of drug-fuelled crime, addiction and homelessness is powerfully recounted in his memoir, Wasted. Even Mr Johnson himself is not sure how he survived the onslaught of crack, heroin and alcohol for so many years. Some higher power must have been at work, he muses.
Now 38 and clean for the past nine years, Mr Johnson is not about to flout his good fortune. Instead, he is on a path to prevent other marginalised teenagers from following in his footsteps. This year he set up a new national charity called User Voice, which aims to ensure disadvantaged young people are properly supported and heard at the highest level.
Read the full piece at www.tes.co.uk. Learn more about User Voice at www.uservoice.org.
This article was written by Mark and was published in a recent issue of The Big Issue magazine in the UK:
G is a former medical student whose wealthy and generally happy childhood had a dark side: sexual abuse. In adulthood he suffered from depression. Smoking weed progressed to smoking crack and soon his medical career was over. Occasional drug-induced psychosis became a permanent state. Whenever he was admitted to hospital, despite self-harming, he was released after one night because his illness was drug-induced – although you could argue that the drugs were illness-induced. Before long, G was taken into custody instead of hospital.
“I was really acting crazy, walking down the street naked, hearing voices, including the Queen’s. I was put in a cell shouting and barking like a dog. The officer came in and said keep quiet but that incarceration was terrible. I walked around and around and I banged on the door until I got myself taken down. I mean 5 or 6 officers jumped on me and tied me down and took me to a cell where there was just a mattress on the floor and a blanket. I was given medication to sedate me throughout my incarceration.
“Actually, I was never convicted of any crime but those months I spent in jail on remand I regard as wasted time. I could have been treated for my problems there instead of just being sedated then put back on the streets.
“G eventually found his way, on his own, into rehab. In his early 40s, clean five years and now working for the NHS as a mental health support worker, he frequently encounters people with undiagnosed mental illness and consequent drug use, as well as drug users who are living with induced mental illness. Either way, they’ve generally, like G, had some horrible experiences in jail.
It will come as no surprise to G or the many thousands like him, that a huge new report into mental health and the criminal justice system has found a dog’s dinner of piecemeal policies, failure to diagnose, intervene or support at any stage and a flaunting of human rights which shames us all.
Unfortunately Lord Bradley’s report offers few solutions. The recommendations tend to demand more studies, reviews or reports, more awareness programmes for already overworked service providers like the police, more leaning on the unmonitored, un evaluated and usually unprofessional third sector. Despite the time and money spent on this report, it only proposes building further on our existing chaos.
Here are my own proposals. I can offer them at a fraction of the time and money the Bradley report cost because, unlike anyone involved in that report, I have first-hand experience of the ugly interface of mental illness and criminal justice .
1. Tear up the existing hotchpotch of ill thought-out provision and start again. Build a new policy from the ground up by talking to people like G and me with experience of mental ill-health inside the criminal justice system. The answers to the problem lie in the cells and on the wards but Lord Bradley has done no more than nod towards service users. He should have listened to their anguish and witnessed their anger, and, yes, shared it.
That would have led to change. By consulting people far away from the point of delivery, he has simply shared their delusions and re-enforced their failing systems.
2. There’s a big review of drugs in prisons going on right now: work together for a new system, recognising that mental health and drug abuse are often interlinked. At the moment, as Lord Bradley points out, dual diagnosis means offenders are generally treated for neither problem.
3. Accept that the key is early intervention. I defy you to find a service user who is or has been mentally ill who claims that all the signs were not evident in childhood. Children leave their troubled families to go to schools, churches, clubs and classes and that’s where we need awareness training. I’m not talking about well-meaning volunteers. I’m talking about a teacher who is trained to spot certain indicators. And an available professional who can deal directly with the child when a teacher is concerned.
4. Forget systems and think individuals. Just as Lord Bradley preferred data to people, most service providers find it easier to hide behind a computer than interact with the misery on the front line. But in drug courts something strange has been noted: when an offender progresses through the system under the care of only one judge, he has significantly less chance of re-offending. Continuity of care, where service users actually develop personal relationships with one service provider, is the human face of the system. Before we condemn them as offenders, let’s remember that the mentally-ill are vulnerable humans and patients first.
In his latest Guardian column, published today, Mark explains how it’s personal communication that offers the best way for youth and social workers to make a real difference in the lives of youngsters branded by society as ‘offenders’:
“At a conference recently, I learned that the people who are supposed to be “managing” our offenders now spend up to 80% of their time in front of a computer. Too much passion and enthusiasm ends up channelled into an office, not with the people who need human contact.”
Read the full article at www.guardian.co.uk.
Mark’s latest article for The Guardian was published in April and can be read online at www.guardian.co.uk. In this piece, Mark talks about the very real need for the authorities to actively engage with young people in order to help them start solving their problems, and how a small amount of money spent on intervention and support at the right time could help save millions in social costs throughout the life of a troubled teen.
In two accompanying pieces, some of the teenagers that Mark introduced to Government officials at a Downing Street meeting share their impressions of the visit and young people from Birmingham describe their own harsh life experiences.