Could therapy horses be the solution to Britain’s prison crisis?

An innovative rehabilitation programme is using ‘equine therapy’ to break the cycle of crime and ease the overcrowding crisis in Britain’s prisons.

“I was hungover that morning. I’d had an argument with my kids’ mum the night before and got drunk,” says Sam, 31, recalling the day he first came face to face with a therapy horse. “Steve [a criminal rehabilitation case worker] came over and had to drag me out of the bed to take me to the farm.

“I just went for the barbeque and the coffee; I didn’t want anything to do with the horses – I was scared of them.”

But when he entered the yard where the horses were waiting that morning in May last year, says Sam, one of them seemed to look right at him. “I don’t know what happened but I was just drawn to it. I went over and it rested its head on my shoulder,” he recalls.

“It was mad. That weight on my shoulder seemed to just wash away all my worries – I had goosebumps all over, like at my kids’ births. I was completely lost emotionally at the time, and for some reason this huge animal was pointing the way for me.”

Sam, a serial recidivist (an official term for reoffender) from Bristol, had been taken to the Dials Green Farm animal sanctuary in Lottisham, Somerset, to take part in an innovative rehabilitation programme for former prisoners, aimed at reducing reoffending rates and ultimately helping to alleviate the overcrowding crisis that Britain’s prisons are currently facing.