ABOUT

In support of Business in the Communities Reducing Re-offedning through employment scheme, we developed a campaign (featuring a technological first) which asked the public to give ex-offenders a second chance…

BITC asked us to help them address an increasingly untenable
problem in the UK.

17% of the population has a criminal record. 50% of ex-offenders reoffend within the first year at cost to society of £65k in the first year or imprisonment, and £37,800 for every year thereafter. The total cost to society of re-offending is whopping £11bn.

Yet ex-offenders are significantly less likely to re-offend if they
are given a job. Employment is key… but would you give an ex-offender a job?

Our research (which included working with prisoners before and
after their release) led us to realise that prejudice against ex-offenders is one of the last acceptable prejudices in the UK. If we allow this to continue, more and more lives will be lost to the never ending cycle of offending and re-offending, to the significant financial cost of society, and emotional suffering of the individuals and society more broadly.

We decided to confront the public with their own prejudices- and to
ask them to reconsider.

We developed an un-skippable pre-roll ad: the more often you tried to skip the story of our ex-offender, the more dejected he got. If you let him speak, he grew in confidence. By subverting the skip ad butter, we confront viewers with their propensity to write someone off in seconds, and to dramatise the effect this can have on an ex-offender- a real person, otherwise fully qualified for the job.

The campaign was supported with National Press and National Radio-
which subverts the familiar CV format to deliver the impact of realising mid-way through the execution that the proponent is an ex-offender.