In Clink prison restaurants, there is fellowship in food

By training prisoners to run restaurants, the Clink Charity is helping to reduce reoffending and change punters’ attitudes

The Ministry of Justice produced a report last week, showing that the Clink Charity had had a “statistically significant” impact on reoffending rates among prisoners. The Clink scheme helps prisoners to run restaurants. They learn to be chefs, bartenders, waiters, porters and front of house. They get City and Guilds qualifications in food and beverage services, professional cookery and food hygiene. In the four prisons running restaurants – High Down in Surrey, Brixton, Cardiff and Styal in Cheshire – there has been a significant reduction in recidivism, 7% overall (in Brixton, reoffending rates were 11% for men who had worked in the restaurant, compared to 32% overall).

Reoffending is mainly a story about society, actually – not about prisons, or even, especially, about restaurants. People talk about reoffending as if it were something innate in, or bred out of, a prisoner. But it is really hard to get a job with a criminal record.