A PIONEERING rehabilitation scheme for young offenders which was devised and run in Scotland for 10 years before being controversially scrapped is now being trialled in England.
The Airborne Initiative, a residential course based in Lanarkshire staffed by specialist social workers and outdoor recreation experts, took in hundreds of male criminals aged 18-25 between 1994 and 2004 before being wound up by the then Scottish Executive. It is now being piloted with young offenders from Portland Prison in Dorset.
Some referred to the Airborne Initiative as a boot camp. In reality, it combined outdoor physical activities with counselling for youths who had not responded to conventional punishment and rehabilitation.
Dr Alan Rutherford, a co-founder of the initiative, told the Sunday Herald he was contacted by former Conservative MP for West Dorset and one of the prison's governors, Sir James Spicer, who was interested in launching the scheme for young offenders at the unit.
Pilot courses are now up and running, with a residence provided by the Duchy of Cornwall, Prince Charles's estate, through his capacity as Colonel-in-Chief of the Parachute Regiment.
Rutherford said: "They want to establish a course that would be an alternative to custody as opposed to a pre-release course, and that would mean getting the magistrates on board the same as we had to get the sheriffs on board in Scotland.
"The sheriffs were very enthusiastic about the Airborne Initiative because it produced better results than Polmont [Young Offenders Institution in Falkirk], and I think they'll get the same results down there [in Dorset] as well."
A spokeswoman for the UK Ministry of Justice said it had been "anecdotally very effective" though there were currently no plans to roll it out nationally.
The move comes five years after Scottish Justice Secretary Kenny MacAskill told the Airborne board he would not be following through with the SNP's manifesto pledge to reinstate the programme.
Rutherford is now in the process of winding up Airborne Initiative (Scotland) and transferring its residual £6000 funds to help cover the legal and administrative costs of getting the charity up and running in England instead.
The programme, praised for dramatically reducing rates of reoffending among participants, was closed in February 2004 after the Labour-Liberal Democrat coalition at Holyrood, led by First Minister Jack McConnell, withdrew its £600,000-a-year funding. There had been an outcry by residents in his Motherwell and Wishaw constituency after the scheme relocated from Abington in South Lanarkshire to Braidwood House, near Carluke.
Opposition was strengthened following the broadcast of a BBC documentary called Chancers, which depicted unruly behaviour among young recruits on the scheme.
The SNP pledged to reinstate the Airborne Initiative once in power, but after being elected as a minority administration in May 2007 abandoned the plan later in the year.
Rutherford said: "We were badly let down by Holyrood – it was all very nasty politics. We were assessed independently by two separate university studies that proved we were well ahead on recidivism. It was copied in Bermuda, it was copied in South Africa – we were leading the world."
Former SAS colonel and retired chief inspector of Scottish prisons Clive Fairweather, a trustee and former adviser to the Airborne Initiative, said the issue had become a "political hot potato" in Scotland.
He said: "It took in a small number of persistent offenders who caused a huge amount of trouble on housing estates across Scotland, and in nine weeks turned them around.
"Above all it required a residential approach, and a residence was at the heart of the problem because nobody wanted all these young offenders in their area. So I think the civil servants thought, 'It's just too difficult'.
"As a result, people in Scotland are being let down because nothing is really being done about the persistent offenders."
A spokesman for the Scottish Government said there were no plans to reinstate the Airborne Initiative in Scotland.
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