The essence of Courses, rehabilitation, offending behaviour stuff and health was going to be my opinion of just the system within prison.
However I am going to harp on about the correctness of courses for rehabilitation back into the community, such as alcohol dependent burglars or drug users who in all probability had a helping hand to get in the state they find themselves in. So, stop reading if it is going to bore you.

Help for these inmates cannot begin early enough, or be of sufficient curative structure to be in any way a permanent support, without massive help on release. It is not there and the system is well aware of it! Does no one do the re-offending figures for these groups, or understand the wider cost to family life, to say nothing of the additional costs to the nation. If these lads got the help from the system they require, instead of being cast adrift with a paddle in a sea full of bottles, they might be able to find the ground again.

I found other equally silly courses geared to make the wider audience outside the system think it actually worked. What a load of crap. The system gets thousands of pounds for each inmate on each course, when it is purely about the movement of monies from one Government Department to another. Do the people actually get anything from the courses, I wonder?

The courses range from aggression control, to sexual offending courses include alcoholic, and drug rehabilitation groups.

The major importance of any of these courses is the need for the participating inmate to want to do it, the obvious reason you would think would be, to be offending behaviour free on release, unfortunately nothing is as it seems. The main reason they all do it is that, conditions for the supplicant improve massively for the repenter and includes the possibility of an early release, parole board members would have to be impressed with a born again teetotal burglar. This does little justice to the inmate struggling to fight off his burdensome load and come out a new person.

If it made no difference to the length of time spent inside or the conditions you spent them in, I wonder what the take up would be. However, the Government has to be seen to be doing something, so I have no doubt it will continue to pour millions of pounds down the drain into the coffers of the organised psychobabble and gobbledegook brigade, funding of which should be investigated at a very independent level. The methods used to treat sex offenders has in other countries been proved not to be of any help and can actually make a "normal" person slide off the rails!

To allow some first year student psycho inside anyone's head to practice his or her black art is truly horror show stuff. To see and have to deal with their pathetic attempts at so called cognitive therapy, is to sit up all bloody night, trying to bring down a very confused 20 stone gorilla of a man, who knows he did nothing wrong, but that the law says he did.

I, as you can see have a very one-sided opinion of the black arts, if the need for the confessional grabs you, see a priest! If the demons inside your head are not controlled by your conscience, then there is little anyone else can do to help. Only the love of a family can offer any comfort and support. If you are on your own, find a reason to survive, and hold onto it for all you are worth. The true counsellor without a hidden agenda is hard to find, talking to the wall has less appeal, but a lot less risk!

My grandfather said "do the thing you fear most in life, then nothing frightens you anymore." Believe me, when I say nothing concerns me now.