Since the late 1990s a community-based initiative known as time banking has developed in the UK. Towards the end of the previous Labour government some of these practices were being utilised in prison services. In power Labour was interested in expanding this idea, but the outcome of the 2010 election drew those efforts to a close. Here I suggest that Labour needs to recapture this initiative and expand time bank practices into youth justice.
To outline how time banking works: for each hour someone volunteers to their community they receive a credit, each credit is redeemable for an hour at a social event or service offered by your neighbours. To illustrate this, I could volunteer two hours taking part in a litter clear up, earning me two time credits. I could then use these credits getting saxophone lessons from a neighbour or to attend a local am-dram performance. The key to exchange is time and the equivalence of the hour. What I can do to earn those credits depend on my own skills and what I can use them for depends on the services offered by others. All transactions are arranged by a time broker rather than directly by members.
These practices have been developed in the UK by FairShares, working with Gloucestershire prison, have established a range of projects, such as bicycle repair, which earn prisoners credits for each hour they gave to the project. These credits can then be given to their families, facilitate access to recording equipment to read stories on to DVD for their children, or contribute to a ‘pot of credits’ accessible by members of the wider community. Building on the success of the bike repair scheme time bank activities also include tutoring as well as a mentoring scheme. The interest shown by Labour focused on rolling out practice to other prisons in an effort to spread good practice. This possibility ended in 2010. Here is something Labour needs to reclaim.
In relation to youth justice it is possible to look at a youth court initiative in Washington DC. Young people form a jury and pass sentence on peers who have carried out minor infractions of the law. Supported by law students the judgments passed always include a mandatory period of training (with laws-related education) to be a member of the peer-jury and to take part in a set number of future youth court sessions, alongside the other punishments set by the peer jury. Recidivism rates of young people who went through this system in 2003 were at 17 per cent, compared to 30 per cent for the control group, and had reduced to 14 per cent by 2008. Whilst the US youth justice system makes it difficult to roll out this practice, within the UK the national (England and Wales) system makes it easier to develop a similar scheme. Again this is something Labour needs to claim.
The coalition government have paid a great deal of attention to the potential of time banking as part of the ‘big society’ agenda, with both the Cabinet Office and department of health promoting this form of practice. Yet this is a co-option of time banking to fit into a narrative of austerity and welfare retrenchment. Under Labour there is a possibility of something more meaningful: the development of practice which can simultaneously challenge social exclusion and foster social cohesion.
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Lee Gregory is a lecturer in social policy at the University of Bristol, School for Policy Studies. He writes here in a personal capacity
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