On redemption row
“You may be Mr Big on the wing, but that means nothing in here,” a young offender at HM Prison Aylesbury in England told the Financial Times. “Here” is a state-of-the-art coffee roaster and cafe designed to help young men aged 17 to 21 to become baristas and increase their chances of finding work after prison.
The wheels were set in motion in 2016 by prison administrator Lee Johnson, then responsible for reducing reoffending, when he asked coffee wholesalers Max Dubiel and Ted Rosner if they would be willing to help train prisoners as baristas. In turn, Dubiel and Rosner asked if it would be possible to roast their coffee in prison; the prison offered them and their business partner Harry Graham the use of a well-ventilated former kitchen. “The transformation cost over £80,000 [€91,000], money we raised via our backers,” Graham says. “This was not easy, as the prison has a fairly restrictive code of practice on even which plumbing company can be used. But now we’re established and are roasting up to three tonnes of coffee beans a week.”
Bearing the label Redemption Roasters, the coffee is bagged and transported to warehouses in Dorset before being sold to wholesale customers in Britain and Germany. “When you are in here, you are treated like an employee, not like a prisoner, because you are fulfilling a real-life job,” Aylesbury warder Marc Wioland comments.