Trapped in a downward spiral of addiction and crime, feeling hopeless and rejected by society, men are being released from prison into society without any of the skills needed to make a new start.
Nehemiah has transformed the lives of over 120 men at Brixton Prison during its three year pilot program with its A New Direction course. Consistently oversubscribed at Brixton, the course was the first of its kind in the UK.
Now in HMP Wandsworth and running in a newly refurbished, specially created supportive unit, the programme is going from strength to strength
Click here to read more about how A New Direction is breaking the destructive cycle of crime and addiction…
The only successful people where I lived were dealers and criminals. From the age of 13 I started mingling with these types. From 14, I began dealing cannabis and by 15 I was dealing crack. Around this time I did my first burglary.
At 16, I moved in with my girlfriend and our baby. I grabbed criminal opportunities when they arose. I started dabbling in ecstasy, coke and drinking. I was sent to prison for six months but made more connections there and sold drugs on a bigger scale when I got out. Over the next five years I was in and out of prison and by 21 my drug use had spiralled out of control.
By 2003 I wanted to make a change but didn’t know how. By 2004 I was arrested again but amazingly, as I was carrying a lot of drugs and money, got bail. I felt that God was giving me a chance. A transaction I’d been involved in had gone wrong just before this and gunshots were fired at my home. The police moved my family to a safe house.
Back in Brixton Prison I enrolled on the A New Direction course. For the first time I began to question the way I thought and behaved. The course taught me to take responsibility for my behaviour and gave me the tools to deal with my emotions so I wouldn’t try to escape from them by using drugs.
Nehemiah’s staff made me feel valued, they genuinely cared about our wellbeing. I wasn’t used to white people giving me that sort of encouragement – not school teachers or nobody.
Having fully recovered, I returned to Nehemiah as a volunteer, then joined the full-time staff team and was made Care Team Leader in February 2008. I have just achieved my NVQ level 3 in Health and Social Care and am also in my third year of a Psychology degree with the Open University. My partner and I have been together for 17 years and are getting married next year. We have two wonderful boys aged seven and 15. My children can now be proud of me.
