On our regular visits to our old favourite Britannia Café up on the hill at Norwich Prison, my teenagers’ imaginations would run wild.

Prisoners worked behind the counter and waited on tables like any other hospitality staff while serving their sentences, only they went back to their cells after their shift rather than heading home.

The chat on journeys home was always about who was in for what, what was their life like behind the wall behind the kitchen, were they really behind bars and why didn’t they just run through the open door we had just walked through and leg it home? 

As they boys got older, their thoughts turned to how these men got to commit crimes and what might they do once they got out.

It was a crucial lesson about rehabilitation, supporting people who have lost their way to be world and work ready when they were released, how some people have appalling starts in life, and second chances.

As they tucked into their lunch, I could tell them about the reality that lurked behind the chintzy café décor because I had been there, on an unplanned visit to the cells during an interview with a new governor in the 1990s.

Then, mid question about conditions – an issue at Norwich that came to a head in 2007 when two former prisoners took their fight to the high court that they were so "appalling" and "wholly unfit" that their human rights had been violated – the governor offered: “Let’s go and see.”

Once through the gates, he flung open a cell door inviting me to speak to the inmates, three to a tiny cell. They didn’t have to say anything. The dreadful conditions were there to see.

T-shirts and socks stuffed into holes to keep the mice out, it was as grim as you could imagine. More Porridge and Ronnie Barker than the "life of luxury" of TV and single cells.

Chatting to the men spending years in those conditions hit home that changing life patterns, making different choices and rehabilitation can never come automatically from punishment. People need help to see and succeed on a different path.

Yet 83pc of offenders are still unemployed a year after being released.

A prisoner's handsA prisoner's hands (Image: Getty Images/Hemera) It was a shock to read in the news this week that one in four Britons has a criminal record impeding their chance of a job because employers are not only prejudiced and wary of employing ex-criminals, but their minds are also closed to it.

Yet few are career criminals. Most deserve a second chance.

That’s why employers like Timpson’s and Greggs, who have been employing ex-prisoners for years, should be applauded for showing them a new way to go straight and build lives.

Greene King and Wincanton, the logistics provider, has joined them on a campaign with the charity ReGenerate, making the business case why more businesses should employ ex-prisoners – giving people a chance. If they want to work, snap them up.

The Good Jobs Project will also help more criminal record holders into work.

Repeat criminality costs the UK an eye-watering £18b, yet two thirds of businesses say they are struggling to fill positions.

Fear of the different means half will not employ anyone who has been in prison, and a third refuse to employ anyone with a criminal record, while 90pc of employers who recruit people with criminal records report high levels of competency, loyalty and retention.

Mistakes are made, judgements get skewed, people are influenced by background or others. Not every criminal is evil and untrustworthy yet are tarred with a lifelong label.

The figures add up. ReGenerate says the economy is missing out on £11.5b of revenue by excluding criminal record holders from work.

It makes business and social sense.  

INCLUSIVE LANGUAGE PHASING OUT WOMEN

No one wants anyone to be left out or feel marginalised but new “inclusive” language and terminology is increasingly leaving out more than half the population - women. 

New guidance for midwifery and perinatal leaders to make their services more inclusive of transgender and non-binary patients puts forward alternative terms its researchers say make clear that services are available to anyone who is pregnant, not just those who identify as women. 

The guidance, published this month in the journal, Birth, and authored by midwives and midwifery students among others suggests using terms such as ‘pregnant people’, ‘service users’ or ‘expectant parents’ when referring to people accessing the service instead of ‘mothers’ or ‘women’.

No one wants inequality or unfairness, but phasing out the words woman and women is as discriminatory? 

JUST A "STUPID JOKE"?

On the day James Cleverly was booted out of the Tory leadership race, his wife, Susie, graced the front of The Times saying her James was no lad, more a big teddy bear.

The teddy bear husband who apologised on Christmas Eve last year for saying at a drinks reception that the ideal spouse was "someone who is always mildly sedated so she can never realise there are better men out there”, also mentioning date-rape drug Rohypnol only hours after the Home Office announced plans to crack down on spiking.

His wife “wasn’t offended” because it was “just a stupid joke.” One that demonstrated his judgement and could have cost him the role of leader of the opposition.