My First Murderer

The company I work for gets money from the DWP and other Government agencies to run programmes to help tackle worklessness in deprived areas. Technically, it's my job as a Bid Writer to win this money for the company, but everybody in the office tends to do a bit of everything that's going on.

Currently we're doing some work with ex offenders. I'm actually visiting a prison later on in the week with a few colleagues (I'm not sure why we need to do this work wise, but I'm looking forwards to it from an academic point of view... See Foucault in action and all that.). Anyway, at uni I was into the whole rehabilitation not just retribution thing, and I absolutely loved the half modules I did on Criminology and treatment of Offenders.

Rehabilitating offenders is crucial to tackling crime rates, as such a high percentage of reported crime is committed by a small number of repeat offenders. The two largest factors affecting recidivism are Housing and Employment. So it is important that employment opportunities are made available to offenders for them to be able to start afresh in a law abiding life.

In Criminology we studied "Labelling Theory" which was another theory that I absolutely loved. The theory argues that by labelling people as "criminals" or "offenders" we cast them out from society, and make it impossible for them to return to the fold. With this label, they then find themselves conforming to the stereotype put upon them, and will consequently continue to behave as "criminals".

So, controversial and politically sensitive as all this is, that kinda sums up my thoughts about this group of people and how we should treat them: Give them a chance to start afresh and don't throw their history in their face at every corner, or they'll never reform.

AND THEN I MET A MURDERER.

I'm interested in the Criminal Bar. I think I'd prefer Family, but have always considered Criminal, even after i got a 2.2 in my Criminal Law exam in first year. So, meeting murderers is pretty much something I'm going to experience one day as a Barrister. (one day...) But I may have freaked out slightly when I realised I'd just shaken the hand and smiled and had a casual conversation with a murderer. All of my thoughts about negative labelling and giving people a chance to start again went out of my head and I just thought OMG is he dangerous?!

Seconds later all my well intentioned thoughts slowly started to pop back into my head. But I'm still slightly perturbed by my initial wide eyed reaction. Fortunately I wasn't told until he had left the office, so he didn't have to see my wide eyed-ness (that's not really a word is it?...).

Will I always react that way? Is it ok, because the other thoughts came back to me after a few seconds? Am I still the good person I thought I was?

How will I handle a prison full to the brim with Criminals?!

But I am glad to have gotten that experience out of the way and under my belt. I may not have been as calm about it as I would have liked, but now I've met my first murderer (that I'm aware of) I can begin the process of becoming immune to the shock/fear/surprise. To be honest, I've probably met loads in the pub.