Lori Chilton
Lori Chilton
Lori Chilton
“I love Dartmouth: it replenishes the soul,” Lori Chilton says, smiling. “I’ve always had a love of travelling and one day more than 20 years ago I came across on the ferry and just fell in love with the place. I knew I would love to live here one day.”
It’s an ambition she fulfilled in 2012, when she bought and renovated a large flat in the town - the pictures of its transformation are remarkable, sitting in the beautifully appointed living room over looking Lori’s new hometown.
It’s not a bad illustration of her determination: many people looking for a place to settle after retirement would have turned away from what was, essentially, a shell of a home – but Lori could see the potential of the place and enjoyed the work needed to realise it.
One of three children, Lori was born in India in the 1950s, her father worked in the textiles industry and also loved to travel, taking his family along for the ride!
“He only stopped a few months ago, at the age of 83!” Lori laughs. “He always loved to see new places and I’ve got the same bug.”
Sadly, her mother became ill when Lori was 10 and died when she was 12. The family returned to Britain for her treatment and Lori was educated at a grammar school in Manchester.
“When I left school I was not sure what to do,” she said. “Dad wanted me to become an air hostess, as he thought this could allow me to follow my urge to travel but I never found that attractive. I went into retail, and was one of the first women to be trained by Tesco as a manager. I hated it! I left after a year. Then I saw an advert for the Prison Service. I don’t know why but it fascinated me. I suppose I saw an opportunity to help others.”
It was 1977, and at the time the Service was crying out for female officers - where many were the wives of male officers on temporary contracts and only women could work with women prisoners.
“It seemed if you could walk and talk and weren’t pregnant, you were in,” Lori observes, wryly.
Lori started working at Risley Remand Centre and it was an eye-opening experience.
“I’d had a privileged colonial upbringing and, frankly, I was shocked,” she said. “To go to work in a prison with women who had a history of mental health issues, alcoholism, or had been victims of domestic violence was a massive jolt to the system.”
After spending three years at the remand centre, Lori received a promotion: becoming first Senior Officer, then Principal Officer and finally a Prison Governor at Brinsford. She then continued her career development, moving up the ‘grades’ of Governor until she became one of the most respected in the field.
By this time she had been in the prison service for two distinguished decades and had worked with some of the country’s most notorious offenders – from the Brighton Bombers to Myra Hindley. She felt she was ready for a new challenge.
She started working for the Ministry of Justice on a special project to assess scientifically the factors behind reoffending and create programmes to reduce it as much as possible, thereby saving the taxpayer money and reducing overall crime.
“We created courses for offenders which looked at a whole host of issues,” she tells me. “The aim was not just to occupy the offenders but help them to change the way they thought and acted, hopefully breaking the cycle of offending.
“Prisoners face many more problems than just the fact they have lost their liberty. They often have mental health problems, drug problems and more. The average reading age of the prison population in Britain is 9 years old – so basic literacy is also a concern and an obstacle to their being a positive part of society.”
During her years implementing this nationwide policy, Lori faced every possible argument against ‘spending money’ on offenders.
“I’m not a bleeding heart liberal, and I’m not naïve,” she says, “We have a prison population of around 85,000 in Britain and each one costs the taxpayer between £30,000 and £35,000 a year. Pragmatically, if we can stop a proportion of those offenders from coming back to prison when they leave because they can get a job and look after their families without resorting to crime, then that has to be a good thing for society and the public purse too.
“Prison is punishment because it robs criminals of their liberty, but its purpose is twofold and it needs to feature rehabilitation – we have to help people to change their behaviour, gain employment and become part of society. Only a tiny proportion of offenders are serial killers and rapists – most are burglars or drug addicts – and they can be rehabilitated.”
Lori eventually became Head of Rehabilitation Services in England and Wales, responsible for the work with offenders across the whole country, both in prison and in the community. She also implemented a wide-ranging set of schemes to help drug addicts get help in prison to kick the habit. Her efforts saw drug programme delivery go up by 100 per cent.
In 2010, Lori was nominated for the Cabinet Secretary’s Award for Leadership by her own team, and their nomination speaks volumes: “We are Lori Chilton’s senior management team. We have worked for years within criminal justice and government and have seen many different leaders, policies and governments. We think Lori is exceptional. Lori always delivers, but never at the cost of those around her. She is a trailblazer, an innovator but never takes her eye off the ball.”
Soon after Lori was awarded an OBE for her work, but says, as prestigious as it is, and as honoured as she is, that nomination from her team meant the world to her.
“I truly believed in all we were doing and think it made a difference,” she says, “I was always passionate about what I did, and I’m very proud of it.”
During all her work at the Ministry of Justice, more than 10 years of hard graft and determination, it leaves me amazed when she mentions, in passing, that she had breast cancer not once, but three times. She continued working through the illness.
“The last time my doctor advised me to retire, and it seemed like the right time,” she said. “Which is when I looked to coming down to Dartmouth. It’s such a beautiful place and I have friends down here too. The people I’ve met have been great and I think the community has a mix of really interesting people, I think it’s a wonderful place to be.”
First published By The Dart December 2013