Brian (Not his really name) spoke about unfair sentencing practices between the BME and the British Indigenous offenders. Quoting his own words the BME offenders said “one morning on my way to work, I was involved in a fatal road accident where the occupant of the other vehicle lost his life. I was arrested and sentenced to 4 1/2 years. The system is cruelly selective as to who gets what service/sentence and who doesn’t. To my disappointment, while serving my term, I came to realise that British indigenous offenders who commit the same offense as I did would be sentenced to 3 years. The difference being, after my counterparts have served their term and were realised from incarceration, the sentence is realised as spent, while the BME offender who has been sentenced to 4 1/2 years, the crime will remain on their record forever. The disadvantage being that everywhere the BME offender applied for work he/she is required to disclose their criminal record, which most cases the disclosure always leaves a negative impact on the individual. He also mentioned of how inequalities in the provisions of local services hindered the BME offenders to move onto a new life after prison, either in education, employment or housing etc. Another issue of concern I believe the Prisons and some organisations are wrongly profiting from using “offenders” for cheap labour and paying us £7 a month. My argument is why can’t these companies create job opportunities/apprenticeships for “offenders” when they are released so that they can have somewhere to start from.

Another BME ex-offender, Anderson not his name said, I was arrested 3x for a theft offense. The first 2 of the offenses took place before I became an adult. I have tried on two occasions to enroll first as a medical student & on another occasion as an aircraft engineer and I was asked to abandon the cause because I was told I had not disclosed my criminal offense. When I committed all the 3 offenses just like any other young person I was uninformed of the consequences. Now I am stripped of my citizenship and I am not allowed work. And I have been told that I am going to be deported. I have been anxiously waiting for 2 years. I have no clue when the immigration will come after me and the indefinite wait is causing me never-ending worry and anxiety. Now I have a baby whom I cannot care for financially but the baby and myself have to depend on my baby mother for everything. I see the indefinite wait and the lack of recourse as a trap for me to re-offend. My question is “if I offended before I became an adult, why doesn’t the criminal justice treat me the way they treat my counterparts?” If every child matters, does it mean that policy only applies to the “other Indigenous children” and not to the minority offenders as well? When does the criminal justice stop to look at a minority offender who committed a crime during the time they were a juvenile stop to become a crime?

Richard also an ex-offender without going much into his own story, he also spoke of issues of unfair sentencing and inequalities in the service provisions within the criminal justice system. I was an accomplice not even the mastermind of the offense committed, I drove a car not my car for my friends who went and committed armed robbery. My friends who are British indigenous were sentenced 15 months while I got 7 years. And yet my friends were the actual perpetrators— the only crime I did was driving them. I was also surprised when the case was reported in the newspaper, only my picture and my name featured on the front page.

Here at The Breaking of Dawn, we are committed to providing a safe, and comfortable environment for people we work with. Their safety and well-being come first and we try our best to accommodate our clients’ requests and guarantee and respect the confidentiality of the information they have given us. We are seeking to work with the “offender” and act on their behalf against the prisons service and the criminal justice system to look at their unfair practices and inequalities of service provisions: we also seek to bring to the attention of the Prison Services and the government the unlawful profiting from “offenders”.