I escaped the cycle of crime but there are prisoners who cannot break free. We need a top team to champion them
Livingston boss’s warning over lack of rehabilitation for inmates
Gordon Blackstock Livingston manager David Martindale may be an exemplar of rehabilitation and a role model for inmates desperate to turn their lives around.
But the football boss has warned that Scotland’s justice system is in desperate need of an overhaul if it’s to have any chance of preventing other ex-convicts from reoffending.
The 46- year- old rookie coach has transformed the West Lothian club from Premiership battlers to cup finalists and the country’s form team in just a few short weeks.
It is a far cry from the grimy life of organised crime which landed him behind bars after being nailed for drug dealing by undercover police officers in 2004.
Martindale candidly refuses to wallow in self-pity and claim he fell in with the wrong crowd. Instead, he’s brave enough to admit he was the master of his own ignominy.
The straight-talking supremo last week quietly celebrated passing the Scottish Football Association’s “fit and proper person” test, allowing him the chance to continue on his road to redemption.
But the SPFL’s newest touchline recruit sent a message to the Scottish Government that they are failing to provide other offenders with a pathway out of crime.
Martindale, who grew up in Govan and the Craigshill area of Livingston, told how while locked up in Glasgow’s hellish HMP Barlinnie and Shotts Prison, he came into contact with “hundreds” of men trapped in a vicious crime cycle. He said jails were “bursting at the seams” from overcrowding.
The ex-amateur player, who got the club’s hotseat after joining as a volunteer, said: “The biggest thing missing from the prison system in Scotland is beds. There are too many people committing crimes and going in and then coming back again after they’re released.
“You don’t see how tough the prison service is until you go into it.
“There are people in prison just because they have three meals a day, a roof over their head, a shower and a place to sleep.
“I met hundreds of people like that. Trapped in a cycle. You’d see a lifer getting out after doing 25 years. But a couple of months later they’re back inside for smashing a car window. They’d do anything to get back behind bars where they know what to expect.
“How do we stop that pattern? We’re going to need smarter people than me to answer that but it needs to change.
“It’s really difficult because there are people going in with nothing and coming out with nothing.
“I met people who didn’t want to be transferred from closed prisons like Barlinnie or Shotts to open estates like Noranside. They knew that progression would see them spend a week out of prison and they had nowhere to go. In the next 20 years we’re going to end up with a country with two new prisons built to cope with the population, which will cost the taxpayer.
“Losing your liberty and being a prisoner is a horrible experience but I have so much respect for the people working in there.
“There are a lot of people doing good work in jail but their hands are tied. More needs to be done with rehabilitation programmes, which will lessen the chance of reoffending.”
Martindale served more than three years of a six-and-a-half-year sentence handed to him at the High Court in Edinburgh in 2006 after he admitted drug and money laundering
offences. The dad told how being scooped up by undercover officers and languishing in a hold ing cel l in Glasgow’s London Road police station for four days over the Easter weekend was when he hit rock bottom.
The former restaurant and pub boss turned to crime when his businesses started to lose money. He said: “I was in the cells. It was a Thursday and because it was the Easter weekend I had to wait till Tuesday to go to court. That was the worst experience of my life. Sitting in the cell, I thought, ‘ I can’t keep doing this – I need to do something.’”
Within months of getting out on bail and awaiting trial, he had enrolled in a construction management course at Edinburgh’s Heriot-Watt University, determined to turn his life around.
He added: “I was doing the course until the day before I was jailed – one day I was in lectures, the next I was in Barlinnie. “I remember standing in the dock when I was sent to jail – bang, that was me. I looked down and took off my watch and took out
GUILTY
Martindale after his court case my wallet. I looked at my partner Martha. She broke down in tears.”
Martha stood by him and the pair married months after his release from jail in 2010, having daughter Georgia the following year.
Martindale said he was fortunate in prison that his offending wasn’t marked by addiction issues.
He said: “I was never a ‘Mr Big’, despite the way I’ve been described. Maybe in weight. But it wasn’t addiction that took me into that world, just greed.
“There are plenty of people in prison who have addiction issues – drugs, drink or gambling. It makes it harder to get out of that cycle.”
While in open prison at Noranside in Angus as he prepared for release, Martindale resumed his studies at Heriot-Watt.
He said: “We had an ‘education suite’ there. But in reality it was just a computer. My tutor would give me work. When I was released, I was allowed back on to campus.”
Martindale f inally graduated in 2012 with a 2:1 honours degree that saw him land a job in the construction industry before he got back into football.
He applied to train for his football coaching badges when he was freed and was accepted onto an SFA course to get a C Licence. But four days into the programme he was asked to leave when a disclosure check flagged up his unspentconviction.
“His determination to succeed saw him travel to Northern Ireland, where he got the qualification. He is now within touching distance of getting an A Licence.
Livingston appointed him as their manager last year. He’s since gone on to lead them to the Scottish League Cup final, which will be played next month.
Martindale added: “Do I think my past will put limits on my career? Hopefully not but you’d be naive to think it won’t affect it. Am I going to end up as the Manchester United or Rangers manager? Let’s be honest, probably not. But I don’t have a problem with it. I’m happy with where I am.”
Last year, a report found HMP Barl innie was approximately
It was the worst experience of my life. Sitting in the cell, I just thought, ‘I can’t keep doing this’
500 people above its capacity. It is due to be replaced in 2025.
Emma Jardine, of prison charity Howard League Scotland, said: “We need to acknowledge the importance of protective factors in ensuring people don’t get drawn back into a cycle of offending.
“One of these factors is having a job but, as David Martindale knows, a criminal record can often exert a significant negative impact on your ability to access employment.”
The Scottish Prison Service said: “David Mar tindale is a good example of someone who can turn his life around. Barlinnie was built in the 19th century and we’re taking measures to create a new prison fit for the 21st century. Reoffending is a wider societal issue and needs to be tackled by us all.”