Finedon vicar Rev Richard Coles' future prison volunteer role

A Finedon vicar, TV and radio broadcaster and author who will leave his parish in the spring has revealed his plans to become a prison volunteer in a podcast.

Rev Richard Coles, who is the incumbent at St Mary the Virgin, is hoping to help people in prison avoid going back into the criminal justice system when he retires next year.

Speaking in new podcast 'Justice, Disrupted', produced in association with Community Justice Scotland, Mr Coles talked about his previous experience with prison chaplaincy and that he wanted to support those in jail.

Chatting to Disrupted podcast host Byron Vincent Mr Coles said: "What I want to do is to hear people really, talk to people, especially people who are a) not used to being heard, and b) might not be easy to understand - it's an odd privilege you get with a dog collar, there must be some kind of sociological code, but people will talk to you.

“In prisons you can sometimes be vulnerable, if you speak freely. To have someone you can speak to freely is often quite a productive thing, I think.

“I think it's very obvious if you spend any time in the prison system, you'll get a sense really of how people's lives are distorted as a consequence of misfortune and lack of opportunity, the amount of people who have severe mental health problems, and other people who struggle with literacy."

Mr Coles, 59, who was in ‘80s chart-toppers The Communards before he was ordained, has already had experience in prison chaplaincy in his first parish.

After moving from his home county of Northamptonshire he will use his retirement for more prison ministry as a volunteer.

He hopes he can play a part in helping keep people out of the justice system in the future.

He said: “It’s the numbers of people who are in prison who needn't, shouldn't be in prison, and the prison has become a sort of remedy of last resort.

“Except it's not a remedy of course, you just need a bit of investment in creating communities, I think in which people can perhaps sustain less damage and acquire the kind of the rudiments of human dignity a bit more readily. That would be the way to do it. But you know, that's an easy thing to say, it's a very difficult thing to do.”

He hopes there’s a kinder way of supporting people who are dealing with trauma.

Mr Coles added: “If you can walk a couple of miles in the shoes of somebody else, it might make you a little bit more generous and a bit more thoughtful, in how you handle them, if lives gets messy and unpredictable, and difficult.”

In the broadcast Mr Coles also opened up about the loss of his husband David in 2019 at the age of 42, which he wrote about in his book The Madness of Grief.