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Britan's Leading Ex-Offender Expert on Prisons -

and its most contentious! -

GRENDON PRISON

HM PRISON GRENDON

In 1989, having just received an additional sentence for a hostage incident, Mark was sent to Grendon prison just outside Aylesbury in Buckinghamshire - it was a move that was to change his way of life.

Opened in 1962 HM Prison Grendon has earned a formidable reputation for taking some of the most difficult, dangerous, violent prisoners the system has to offer - and turing them around. A Home Office study found Grendon had a reconviction rate of just twenty per cent - compared to almost 75% for the rest of the prison population - and that figure is all the more remarkable because the prisoners who go to Grendon have a higher propensity to reoffend in the first place.

Operating on a therapeutic model of groupwork, Grendon encourages its prisoners to take responsibility for their actions and to understand how they ended up in prison so they are better prepared to avoid crime and its consequencs in the future; since his release in 1995 Mark has never returned to crime.