Former Arsenal and England legend Ian Wright is supporting a Home Office scheme to train prisoners to become football coaches. Ex-Arsenal chairman David Dein set up the Twinning Project in October 2018, linking football clubs and prisons to provide education and support. There are now 73 English clubs partnered to local jails. Wright - who spent a short time in prison as a young man himself - said initiatives like this are a lifeline in England's overcrowded prisons. Report by Czubalam. Like us on Facebook at http://www.facebook.com/itn and follow us on Twitter at http://twitter.com/itn
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00:00 It's a day of celebration for them, you know, they've gone through the program and it's
00:04 a step, it's another step to rehabilitation in respects of making a decision to make change
00:10 and that's always very difficult.
00:12 I know they're in a place where they're captive but at the same time once you make that decision
00:17 then it's easy for me to then speak to them to try and help me to continue on the road
00:21 of making the right decisions for themselves.
00:23 So you know it's nice when people, when you come into a place like this and you get so
00:27 much energy back because they're pleased to see you but at the same time it's an amazing
00:31 achievement that they've had today.
00:33 Being somebody who, you know what I mean, at one stage of my life I was actually incarcerated,
00:36 I was in prison in Chelmsford and I know that you can change, you know, so it comes down
00:43 to being a person in a position to speak from experience.
00:48 You know, funding is always going to be the major problem but you know it's very difficult
00:53 to complain when you're getting something, you have to get something because you have
00:57 to start somewhere, of course you need more funding and people say, oh, funding should
01:01 be going to more important things.
01:02 I don't know if there's anything more important in society right now than trying to bring
01:06 down the rates in respects of crime.
01:09 So you know, if we're going to talk about funding of course you can have more and the
01:14 more you can get you know you're going to welcome it but the fact is, is that something's
01:19 being done and when you see the happiness on their faces, when you see the change, it
01:24 makes you realise that things can change.