Ex-criminal sows seeds of a new start for prisoners (From The Northern Echo)

Ex-criminal sows seeds of a new start for prisoners

3:02am Monday 31st December 2007

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A REFORMED North-East criminal's charity to steer young offenders away from the wrong side of the law has attracted attention from prisons on the other side of the world.

Gram Seed, of Stockton, launched Sowing Seeds Ministries in June, in the hope of helping prisoners and young offenders follow in his footsteps and change their way of life.

From an early age, Mr Seed, 43, became involved in football hooliganism and served a number of prison sentences in the Eighties for violent crime.

Since the launch of the charity, Mr Seed has spent time talking to inmates and attempting to persuade them to turn their backs on a life of crime.

The scheme has grown quickly and Mr Seed is in talks with a view to working with prisoners in Australia, in September.

Much of his work is at Hassockfield Secure Training Centre, near Consett, in County Durham, and at Holme House prison, in Stockton.

But he frequently visits schools and colleges across the Tees Valley to tell youngsters how he nearly lost his life to crime.

Before Christmas, he also went to Wayland Prison, in Norfolk.

Mr Seed said: "It was while talking to the prisoners at Wayland that, once again, I realised why I have to do this work.

"As usual, there were a couple at the meetings who didn't seem to want to listen to start with.

"But I opened my heart to them and they began to take more interest."

In the new year, Sowing Seeds will be working with inmates at Guernsey Prison. This will be the first time prisoners on the island will have been persuaded to steer away from crime by a personal story.

Mr Seed will also address the UK branch of the Prison Fellowship at its annual conference in Derby, in March.

Mr Seed was given his first custodial sentence when he was 16 for breaking and entering offences, and subsequently served time for grievous bodily harm, actual bodily harm, breaching the peace and shoplifting.

In the Eighties, he joined Middlesbrough Football Club's hooligan gang and his body bears the scars of numerous stabbings, cuts and dog bites from incidents at matches.

He descended into alcoholism and homelessness and then, in 1996, his health collapsed and he went into a coma for six days, but his mother refused to allow the life-support machine to be turned off.

Since then, Mr Seed has devoted his life to working with offenders and trying to get them to change their lifestyles.

The married father-of-two is very aware that first thoughts must always be with the victims of crime.

But he set up Sowing Seeds - of which the Archbishop of York, Dr John Sentamu, is a patron - to show prisoners that they can choose a different lifestyle, free of violence and addiction.

Mr Seed said: "If I can persuade one person not to rob, sell drugs, burgle houses or commit any sort of crime, then all of society will be richer."

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