Inside Norwich Prison: How teaching fellow inmates to read saved Toby's life

ITV News

5 days ago

ITV News Anglia was given rare access inside Norwich Prison to see how prisoners are helping each other learn to read, as part of our literacy series A Word's Worth. Rob Setchell reports.
The nonsense verse of Lewis Carroll's 'Jabberwocky' is scrawled on a white-brick wall, posters champion the benefits of meditation and the enchanting melodies of the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra drift down the corridor.
All in all, it is not the welcome I expected inside Norwich Prison.
We've got rare access to see how inmates are turning their lives around by teaching each other to read - but before we can talk literacy, music is on the agenda.
In the room next to the library, members of the Royal Philharmonic are performing songs written by prisoners for the children they are separated from.
The Lullaby Project, delivered alongside the Irene Taylor Trust, leaves many sat watching in tears.
Toby Bunting's song is dedicated to his godson. He called it "Beacon of Hope".
The 52-year-old looks vaguely familiar. He soon tells me why.
His case was featured on Channel 4's 24 Hours in Police Custody. He was caught red-handed on the A47 with thousands of pounds worth of crystal meth and cocaine. He was jailed for 30 months.
A year on, he is a mentor co-ordinator for the Shannon Trust, a charity which runs reading programmes in prisons.
He has been allowed to transform an old storage room into an area where he can mentor other prisoners with their reading - a job, he says, that has saved his life.
"I'd given up," he said. "I'd made some mistakes, made some stupid decisions and I threw away a 24-year career in the NHS.
"This room is my saviour. This room and doing the teaching. I do it non-stop, seven days a week.
"There are several learners that I've got that came in with a mental age of about seven. They couldn't string together a basic sentence.
"But some of them come in two hours every day and do sessions. That's just amazing."
About 70% of people in prison can't read - or struggle to. Many have awful memories of school.
Studies show prisoners who engage in education inside are less likely to reoffend when they get out.
The Shannon Trust says it's often the introduction to reading that can start to turn a life around.
"Most of them have never picked up a book," says programme manager Courtenay Amis. "They've never been to a library. They've never read a newspaper.
"Once they start doing those things - when they start achieving what we would think of as small things but for them it's a huge achievement - they get involved in other worlds that they wouldn't have been able to.
"We've got a lot of people who love music and they want to start writing music and they want to look at a career when they go out because they've opened that door."
Toby is due to get out soon - but he wants to continue his tutoring.
He has a new desire, he says, to "fix people". He has a new appreciation for the power of words. And, most importantly, he has new hope.