Social Security — The Hospitality Businesses Offering New Opportunities for Former Prisoners
“If I hadn’t met these people, If I hadn’t come to this company, if I’d have gone back to London, God knows what I’d be,” he says, before pausing briefly, a rueful half-smile, half-grimace playing across his face.
He’s one of dozens of ex-prisoners who have been and are employed by Tap Social, an Oxford brewery set up in 2016 to address the British state’s failure to help prison leavers break the cycle of crime.This matters because Britain locks up a lot of people, by European if not American standards.
There’s a £76 ($89) “discharge grant,” provided to all prisoners who have served longer than 15 days, but not much else.
“Eight percent of people will be in paid employment six weeks after leaving prison,” Neilson says.
“After a year, that figure rises, but only to 17%, which gives you an idea of the scale of the problem.” Perhaps it’s no surprise that 60% of people who’ve served short sentences go on to reoffend; they often have mental health or drug and alcohol addiction problems, linked to the lack of a house or a job—a lack exacerbated by being sent to prison.This is why Tap Social exists.
Founded in 2016 and run by four friends with backgrounds in criminal law and hospitality—Amy and Tess Taylor, Paul Humpherson, and Matt Elliott—it has become the leading light in a group of hospitality companies that offer employment opportunities to former prisoners, from HM Pasties in Manchester to New Ground Coffee in Oxford and Redemption Roasters in London.
This success prompts one clear question: Does Tap Social’s model offer a way forward for prison rehabilitation not only in the U.K., but around the world?
“As a criminal barrister, you get to see a large number of clients for a short period of time,” says Humpherson, now 35.
Not far from Oxford is Spring Hill, an “open prison,” meaning that prisoners can leave during the day for work.
This is an unusual arrangement—only about 10% of prisoners in the U.K. live in open prisons—but it’s crucial to Tap Social’s model, as it allows the brewery to employ people before they have to face the multiple difficulties that come with leaving prison.
Before then, about 30% (“A minimum working target,” according to Humpherson) of employees were prison leavers, and figures are nudging up towards that total again now.
Over the past six years, around 40 prison leavers have worked with Tap Social on a “deepest intervention” basis (a minimum of nine months’ work), across the business.
Spring Hill is not the only prison that Tap Social works with.
Both prisons are male, meaning all of those who’ve worked with Tap Social have been men.
“98% of people in prison are going to not be in prison at some point,” he says.
This means that the realities of what happens when people leave prison are best laid out in terms that the listener understands, even if that doesn’t reflect the views of the Tap Social team.
“I feel like we all need to make the world a better place,” he says.
Uddin, who came to Tap Social via Aspire, a charity in Oxford, two years ago, after completing his prison sentence, is visibly proud of how well-ordered, how tidy, everything is.
“I couldn’t work in a job where the boss is watching you 24/7, making you nervous,” the 42-year-old says.
“You spend so much time in a little cell, you become very socially awkward, you don’t know how to interact with people,” he says.
Having conversations with regulars, or even people who just come in once—it’s great to have that confidence and to enjoy life a little bit.”Doma is one of a number of ex-prisoners working at The White House.
He was involved in gang-related violence; 10 years of prison later, he ended up in Spring Hill, and heard about Tap Social from a fellow prisoner.
“When you’re in prison, you think the rest of society hates you,” says Doma.
He credits the turnaround in his life not just to Tap Social but also to therapy he underwent in prison, which helped him take crucial steps away from his old life, spent between the neighborhoods of Brixton and Fulham in London, to how he lives now.
Having served just under 15 years in prison, his passion for cooking led to an interview with Tap Social and a job offer.He’s effusive in his praise for the Tap Social team, who’ve helped him in a variety of ways, including, crucially, housing.
“The best thing about this place is the people,” he says.
It was Tap Social that inspired Joel Grates to set up his own business, the wholesale coffee company and cafe New Ground, along similar lines—or, more specifically, it was Tap Social’s first ex-prisoner employee who provided the inspiration.
“We’ve got quite a large wholesale network now, and since Brexit there’s a gap in hospitality,” he says.
“If we’re asking employers to do better, then we need to ask the prisons, the Ministry of Justice, to do that as well,” he says.
The prison system needs to modernize.”
I went in prison in ’88.” He served just under six years, returning to prison in 1996 for a marijuana case in Rhode Island, for which he served nine years.
The result is Out Of Bounds Nation, Inc, a company “that provides assistance to those with a criminal past to become entrepreneurs, gain an education, and find worthwhile employment,” of which Prison Break Brewing is one part.
“It’s so difficult getting out of prison [in the U.S.],” Thompson says.
When you have that kind of job, you don’t really see yourself going anywhere, and that’s where recidivism comes in, especially for people like me who have been involved in drugs.”The U.S. is full of socially minded breweries, but the focus is—understandably—often on racial justice and the environment rather than prisoner rehabilitation.
“We’re not making light of some of the most negative elements of prison, we’re trying to turn that into a positive force,” says Thompson.
“I want to have multiple breweries around the country,” he says.
“A big success for us would be shifting the policy debate so that a much greater proportion of the prison population were in open prisons, or it was easier for them to get day release,” says Humpherson.
We’re doing OK, but there’s a long way to go.” Humpherson says the signs are good.
“In my inbox, in [other] people saying, ‘I’d like to do that.’”The best way to judge how they’re doing, perhaps, is the impact on the lives of those who have come through Tap Social.