Sycamore Tree: A Chaplain’s View
In June this year, PF Scotland completed the fifth Sycamore Tree Project® in Shotts Prison. The seven prisoner participants in the programme were recruited by the Prisons Chaplaincy Unit. After the course, the Senior Chaplain, the Rev. Allan Brown, provided this report.
Sycamore Tree Report
It has been a great encouragement both to have had the opportunity to
run the Sycamore Tree Course in Shotts Prison for the past three years,
and to witness the range of prisoners who have completed the
course.
HMP Shotts is a long-term adult male prison in central Scotland with
just under 540 prisoners, of which there are around 60% life-serving
prisoners. When we first considered including the course in the
Chaplaincy programme we wondered which target group to concentrate
on: whether those at the beginning of their sentence, those
around the midway point, or those preparing for release. As it turned
out this has proved to have been a non-issue.
Apart from the first group who were carefully selected and interviewed
for the course, we have never had to advertise the course, or appeal
for participants. Word of mouth around the prison has seen a constant
stream of prisoners keen to do the course. Indeed, we are now in the
fortunate position of receiving referrals from other agencies and areas
in the prison of men who are encouraged to take the course.
The surprising thing about this is that at present the Sycamore Tree
Course is not a programme which has any direct bearing on the parole
process. However, it continues to attract prisoners who sincerely wish
to consider the effects of their offending behaviour on the victims of
crime, and are often clamouring to do so!
Sycamore is a course which has proved to be of tremendous positive
benefit to all of those who have participated in it. In a system which
is almost entirely offender-focussed and offender-driven, it has helped
redress an imbalance in awakening prisoners to the needs of victims of
crime. Interestingly, one of the main lessons prisoners have learned
again and again is that the biggest need of many victims is not
revenge, but to have answers to their questions ‘Why?’ and ‘Why me?’ in
order that they may have some kind of closure to the trauma they have
experienced.
At the end of one of the sessions, a man approached me and said that
the expectation of his family and friends when he is eventually
released from prison is that he will return to his former criminal
activity. He agreed that his family got it right. That was his plan.
However, having a new awareness of the effect of offending behaviour on
victims of crime he could no longer fulfil that expectation nor engage
in that kind of activity. This kind of story is repeated by many of the
participants.
October 2008
