In a new article for The Guardian Mark explains that the best people to consult on effective drug rehabilitation methods must surely be reformed addicts – people with direct experience of both addiction and rehabilitation – rather than service providers with no personal exposure to the situation.
Mark argues that the Government’s policy of prescribing drugs to addicts in prison is an ineffective means of crime-prevention and does more harm to the addicted than good to the community in a new article for The Guardian article.
Mark questions the Government’s tendency towards repeat punishment of repeat offenders without emphasis on deterrent or reform in this article for The Guardian.
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.