Serving second chances at Café 16
I interview Fiona Sample MBE to learn more about The Oswin Project’s life-changing initiative.
HMP Northumberland is a stark building, built from red brick and surrounded by wire fences. Few people find this sight comforting. Fewer still associate such brutal architecture with the homely aromas of freshly-baked cakes. But take a walk through the prison’s halls and that’s exactly what you’ll smell.
Since March 2020, HMP Northumberland has been home to Café 16, an initiative run by The Oswin Project that aims to help those with criminal records find employment, training and support in the North East. Approximately 10 prisoners work in the kitchen, producing a range of sweet and savoury bakes while also developing skills that’ll help them find employment upon release.
Speaking to me over the phone, the infectiously enthusiastic Fiona Sample MBE, founder and CEO of The Oswin Project, explained the reason behind launching the initiative. ‘The driving force behind the project was addressing this revolving door wherein those who have been to prison end up going back into it again and again and again.’
This is an especially pertinent issue in the North East which has significantly higher reoffending rates than the national average. Some studies suggest that 67% of prison leavers in the North East reoffend within a year.
Fiona explains that this extraordinarily high reoffending rate is partly due to the disconnect between support given to prisoners on the inside and support provided to prison leavers on the outside. As a result, those who have just left the prison system are often vulnerable and at great risk of being dragged back into crime.
The Oswin Project’s solution to this conundrum is simple: support prisoners throughout their journey, both during their sentence and after release.
Café 16, a café located in Newcastle Cathedral, plays an integral role in this process. It serves serves bakes produced by prisoners in HMP Northumberland’s bakery and is also staffed by prison leavers. ‘By having the bakery in the prison and the café in the cathedral we have built a bridge of opportunity for those in the prison system,’ Fiona tells me. She’s not wrong; reoffending rates of “Oswinners” are astonishing, standing below 3%.
Thanks to The Oswin Project’s successes, the charity has been approached by several prisons eager to implement similar programs. When talking about these possibilities, Fiona mentions that she is especially keen to work with a women's prison, HMP Northumberland being exclusively for men.
The Oswin Project runs multiple initiatives to support prisoners in HMP Northumberland, not all of them related to the production and serving of food. Food is, however, a uniquely powerful means of rehabilitation as Fiona explains, ‘Food nourishes us. It’s a very giving thing to prepare food and serve it to someone [...] When people have been in prison and want to make amends, preparing and serving nourishing food is a fantastic way to do that. It's a wonderful way to step back into society.’
Practical skills only form part of each Oswinner’s rehabilitation. Individuals associated with the initiative also receive one-on-one mentoring which supports them throughout the process of leaving prison and eventually, finding a job elsewhere.
It's not just Oswinners that benefit from Café 16, but those in the surrounding community too. Fiona tells me that, ‘Café 16 changes perceptions, that’s what we’re all about. People often have an image of what prisoners are like but it's incorrect. Many of the men we work with had professional roles and made a terrible mistake and I think when our customers see the people we work with they realise it could easily be them.’
Humanising prisoners and prison leavers is a vital step in moving away from state-sponsored punishment and towards a system that prioritizes rehabilitation. Fiona believes this structural change is desperately needed. ‘Looking at the stats, we have more people in prison than any other country in Europe,’ she tells me. ‘When you look at Norway and Denmark and you see how they work with prisoners, you realise that, as a country, we’re not doing this well. We’re not doing this right. We call ourselves a civilised country while banging up loads of people, some of them in appalling conditions.’
There are reasons to remain hopeful, however. ‘I think we can affect cultural change if we all work together,’ Fiona says, towards the end of our call. ‘There has definitely been a shift. When I had this idea over 10 years ago, some people would get really mad with me. But now, most people think prisoner rehabilitation is a fantastic idea.’
After learning about Café 16, I’ve no hesitation in echoing that sentiment too.