On being released from prison after a sentence for drug trafficking in 2016, Eugene Nzeribe embarked, like many prison leavers, on an unsuccessful job search.
An effort to become a ride-hailing driver ended after a criminal records check, while an attempt to return to his career as a motor mechanic was stymied because, after 15 years inside, he was unfamiliar with the latest technology.
Yet since April, Nzeribe, 61, has been involved with XO Bikes, a two-year-old, charity-owned business that has trained him and scores of other former prisoners in London to work as a bike mechanic.
The new Labour government has pledged to ease pressure on overcrowded prisons in England and Wales, which it has said are “on the point of collapse”. The riots that spread across the UK earlier this month led to hundreds of people charged with criminal offences, further adding pressure to the system.
One aspect of the government’s plan is to encourage schemes that cut reoffending. The appointment of Lord James Timpson, former chief executive of the Timpson shoe-repair chain, as prisons minister has been seen as a signal of determination by ministers to learn from his success in recruiting ex-offenders as staff.
Timpson told the House of Lords in his maiden speech last month that employing ex-offenders could reduce reoffending and ease labour shortages in the wider economy.
The one in four working-age adults with a criminal record were a “huge, largely untapped talent pool”, he said. “Helping them to find work both cuts crime and supports our economy to grow,” he added.
“We have to make prisons rehabilitative and make sure that, when offenders are given a second chance, they can seize it.”
People who find jobs after leaving prison are substantially less likely to reoffend than those left unemployed. While analysis of the effect is complicated, a 2013 Ministry of Justice study found that only 18 per cent of prison leavers who found work reoffended within a year — compared with 43 per cent of those without a job.
XO Bikes’ founder Stef Jones said he had started the business and Onwards and Upwards, its parent charity, after seeing inmates return to prison while working as a volunteer in Brixton prison, south London.
“There are a lot of reasons that guys end up committing crime and going into prison,” Jones said. “Unemployment is a big part.”
The Prison Service has shown its support for XO Bikes’ approach by allocating business space for a new training workshop in Pentonville prison in north London. The workshop has already completed basic training for 15 prisoners, four of whom will attend further training in Lewisham, starting this September.
The scheme has drawn support from companies in the cycle sector. Carl James, workshop and aftercare leader for sporting goods business Decathlon UK, said the company had taken on one mechanic trained by XO Bikes and hoped to take on more. Fettle, a bike-repair business, is also hiring specialists via the programme.
“You know you’re getting contemporary, appropriately trained teammates and you open yourself up to a new recruitment pool,” James said, adding that recruits were often “more super-committed and passionate for it”.
Nzeribe said he was “very hopeful” after completing his training. He is currently working voluntarily to refurbish secondhand bikes but aspires to go full-time.
“I’m a little bit more confident in everything — the job, getting more experience that I need,” he said at XO’s workshop in a shopping centre in Lewisham, south London.
However, substantial barriers remain in the way of ex-offenders seeking jobs.
Ollie Harper, 40, operations assistant at XO, lost his job as a physiotherapist after receiving a suspended prison sentence for assault. He was barred from the wide range of jobs that demand applicants provide a Disclosure and Barring Service (DBS) check showing any convictions.
“Everything with DBS checks was unfortunately out, so it did get quite stressful,” Harper said, adding that the scheme had been “a lifeline” for him.
Since signing up in November he has been promoted to an operations role, managing the stock of hundreds of unclaimed bikes, which XO takes for refurbishment from police forces and railway companies.
Yet Jones noted that, beyond employment, ex-offenders faced challenges negotiating the complexities of the housing, benefits and probation systems.
Those receiving benefits stood to lose them if they missed meetings with staff from the Department for Work and Pensions, while those on probation could be recalled to prison if they missed appointments with probation officers.
“If you get a job, it’s like, ‘Thank you for the job but I can’t come in on Wednesday because I’ve got a housing meeting and I can’t come in on Thursday because I’ve got probation’,” Jones said.
Of the 55 people trained at the workshop in Lewisham, only three have returned to prison, one because of an offence committed years before.
Jones said that for XO and its parent charity the aim was to produce reformed people — “blokes not bikes”.
“For some, it will be a flourishing career,” Jones said of those the business trained. “For others, it’s a sense of self-worth or perhaps it’s a routine.”
