July 20, 2019

InHouse - former prisoners perform on a festival

"It's completely changed me as a person. I'm not this angry little kid anymore" - a former prisoner Aaron, who was in prison last year, tells BBC, and this last weekend he was one of a group of ex-inmates to perform at Latitude Festival. The noble project was started by InHouse Records, UK's first record label for prisoners, founded in 2017 by Jude Armani, and since then it has worked with more than 300 men across six prisons - teaching them everything they need to know to run a fully-functioning record label, from writing their own music to recording, marketing and performing it. The aim is to divert prisoners away from crime by giving them the skills and ambition for employment - and life.  It seems that it's working - almost two-thirds of prisoners released after sentences of less than 12 months reoffend within a year. Out of the 40 or so men who have been released from prison since taking part in the programme none are known to have returned to crime in the past 18 months.