Edges Issue 17: An Arsonist at the age of 10

EDGES MAGAZINE Issue 17

April/May 1999

AN ARSONIST AT THE AGE OF 10

D.J. has come to our organisation for help.
He has rebelled from a very early age.
He states the following:

When I was at school they never understood what I was capable of doing and therefore they gave me work that was too easy and I got bored too easily, and it just started me off by doing things to stop me being bored. I hid other people's work, and stuff like that, this was from the age of 7 onwards. I used to argue with the teachers, I was always getting in trouble with the headmaster, getting expelled from schools, all because I couldn't do the work that was too easy for me. I set fire to one of the schools because I just didn't like it, full-stop, it just wasn't the school for me. It was a special school for children with behavioural and learning difficulties. At the time I might have had behavioural difficulties, but I certainly never had learning difficulties and they just didn't understand that.

I stole cars for a couple of reasons, sometimes if I was angry or fed up I'd travel, by myself, a good distance away. I'd travel to Scotland, London, loads of places by myself, just to get away. I have been driving since I was 10, but I have only been stealing cars since I was 14/15, and then only continuously when I was 16. I use cars as a means to get away from places and calm myself down, and think more clearly. I got banned from driving, and couldn't own my own car, so I had to go out stealing more cars from when I was 17 onwards; if I could drive legally I would have done, but I couldn't do that so I had to steal cars, that was my way of escape.

In prison, I have been to both Hindley and Lancaster Farms. Hindley was a proper dump, there was shite all over the floor, the cells were filthy, steel toilets, pure bang-up 24/7, you couldn't do nothing in there. Lancaster Farms was completely the opposite. The staff in there were sound, they wanted to help, like everywhere there was a couple that were complete divvys (censored). On the Education Department, they want you to succeed, help you to succeed and will give you all the support they can to make you succeed. You can tell them to "get on one" and they'll still come back and help you, they're that type of people and they helped me a lot.

I have been in Lancaster Farms 5 times, 4 times for stealing cars, and the last time was for robbing a policeman's house. This last time I did my longest sentence of all, 33 months, 17 months inside, including extra days. All my other sentences were between 3 months and 6 months, but this last sentence has really made me think. The amount of time I was actually in this prison without being able to walk out down the street whenever I wanted, I realised I needed to change my ways, otherwise I'd be in and out for the rest of my life. I knew what I could do, I knew what I wanted to do, it was just getting it the right way without coming back to prison again. In prison I was trying my hardest to be able to do everything for when I get out, and it all ended up coming down to the last 4 weeks when I was rushing to get things done, and I got out and everything's fine.

When I got released from prison, probation couldn't find me a hostel anywhere, so Melody Wimhurst from Lancaster Farms, organised with Father Jim of the T.H.O.M.A.S. Organisation which publishes the Edges Magazine, to accept me on a placement there within the Reconcile Project. The Organisation runs a rehabilitation programme for drug users and is starting a new programme up called Reconcile Mentoring, which is for ex-offenders to re-integrate them into society. I am the first person on the course. In a way I am a guinea pig for it, but since I have got out I have had a lot of help and support. You don't get a chance to be bored because if there's no work to do you get given dishes to wash! They just keep you busy all the time. During the mornings, I go on a meditation programme, this helps you realise your own feelings and how day to day feelings affect your life as a whole. The rest of the day goes by looking at what you have done in meditation, you get given English exercises, build-up your educational knowledge. They just basically give you all the help to get you ready.

I have been out of prison two weeks now and everything is going fine. I am hoping to start college in September. Due to the help from Lancaster Farms and the Reconcile Project, I will be going on to a much higher course than what I was expecting, or even thought I could get on, so I am looking forward to that happening. Between now and September, the T.H.O.M.A.S. Organisation and the college will be working to give me things to do to keep me busy and stop me getting into offending again.

I'd like to say to Edges Readers that the T.H.O.M.A.S. Organisation is a charity, and to be able to support people like myself, drug users and many other types of homeless people, they need the money to be able to do that, and any charity given will be greatly beneficial to anybody who comes to the organisation for help.