A Lord, a war hero and the National Association of Probation Officers have given their voices to an Island-born campaign to support ex-soldiers behind bars. VB reporter Alex Varley-Winter interviewed David Wilson about his reasons for founding a charity.
Less than a year after founding the Veterans in Prison Association (VIPA) on the Isle of Wight, its volunteers are co-ordinating a national campaign to rehabilitate former soldiers in the criminal justice system.
At their first national conference in London last week, they boasted the patronage of Simon Weston OBE and leadership from the former Chief Inspector of Prisons, former colonel Lord David Ramsbotham.
Nevertheless, chief executive David Wilson had rarely spoken in public before and he admitted he was nervous.
A burning desire to help
“This isn’t about ego,” he explained. “If I manage to get hold of 20 veterans and 15 of them are going to live well, that’s what it is about for me. That’s all the reward I need.”
David, an officer at HMP Parkhurst, set up VIPA in May 2009 with Governer Will Thurbin. Through founding the charity, which is independent of the prison service, the pair hoped to raise awareness of veterans’ issues within the criminal justice system.
“I’m a veteran myself,” David said. He was a Lance Corporal in the Scots Guards and served in Northern Ireland, Belize, Canada and the USA before leaving the forces in 1990. “My military career is a real blip in comparison to what the lads in the past twenty years have gone through and perhaps that’s why I’ve got a burning desire to see them lead successful lives.”
He works with a handful of veterans directly: “Of the ones I see on a regular basis, I’ve got a couple from Northern Ireland, the Falklands, the Balkans and Iraq. There have been a couple that have had mental health issues.”
Post traumatic stress is not the only issue
Mental health problems could prove a great unspoken ghost haunting the Ministry of Defence, but David believes that this is one in a number of problems contributing to the criminal behaviour of some soldiers after leaving the services.
“The issue of post-traumatic stress has only really come out in the past four years. If you say that’s to blame, some veterans [in prison] might try to use that as an excuse for the crimes they’ve committed. I am not interested in justifying their actions,” he said.
“There are plenty of reasons why a lot of lads joined the infantry. Those reasons can include poor education, high unemployment and a bad family unit. When they join the army they’ve got a new family, they’ve got regular pay, they’ll have a social life they never had where they came from. They’ve been trained to be highly tuned individuals. When they leave, they go back into an environment they don’t understand.”
Nevertheless, he feels that all soldiers are affected by their service: “It does change you. When I did my basic training, they were quite brutal with us. My father was also in the army and he noticed a change in me as soon as I went home. All my friends noticed too.”
David describes his military tours as ‘relatively easy’ but suffered post-traumatic stress following the death of his son in a fire. “I carried my trauma around with me for 21 years. I think it was bringing me to my knees. When I left the army I went through a stage of self-destruct. I could quite easily have got into trouble then, but the fact that I’ve had a good life, a good family, prevented me from self-destruction and the prison service has been very supportive.”
The need to rehabilitate
He hopes that by supporting veterans, VIPA will also reduce the burden on an over-crowded prison service, which has had £100 million cut from its budget this year. Researchers’ findings suggest that between 3% and 10% of the prison population are former soldiers.
“It’s all about rehabilitation,” David said. “At the end of the day I’m not going to stand up and say ‘we should give all our veterans respect’. Those in prison have committed crimes and been convicted by a jury of their fellows. We should support our veterans, but I do not think we should make excuses for them. We need to encourage prisoners to reduce their offending and understand the positives that will come from that.”
Image: © Used with the kind permission of Scott Wilson
Left to right: VIPA’s chief exec David Wilson, patron Simon Weston OBE, co-founder Will Thurbin and president Lord David Ramsbotham
