Nottingham’s Jacob Dunne, who killed another young man with a single punch in a 2011 brawl, is now running a campaign to prevent youth violence and reform the justice system after coming face-to-face with his victim’s parents.
James Hodgkinson died after Jacob hit him outside Yates’s on Old Market Square. He admitted manslaughter and served 14 months of a 30-month jail sentence. The case made headlines across Britain after Jacob met James’s parents on his release and apologised to them. They have since backed his efforts to turn his life around and are supporting his campaign for change.
In the third and final part of a three-part series of guest columns written for Notts TV, Jacob, now studying criminology at Nottingham Trent University, relives the moment he met James’s family, explains how he got into education and calls for radical change in the criminal justice system.
Read part one: I killed someone with one punch: How did it come to this?
Read part two: I killed someone with one punch: Here’s how I started to turn my life around
“I can remember at first that when I went to the room they were in I couldn’t actually open the door.
James’s parents were sat in there waiting for me. I remember thinking ‘what are you walking in to?’
I kind of took a deep breath and remembered why I was doing this.
I’d heard all the harm I’d caused and now I’m about to sit in front of them and meet them in person. It felt like just the most socially unnatural thing to do.
This was the last step; I’d spoken to them for the last two and-a-half years and now I’m about to go in and say it to their faces.
I got to learn a lot more about James. They told me a lot more about him and his personality, which I’d never heard before. It’s hard to think of the words to describe how that made me feel. It made what had all been a bit of a blur become a lot more real.
They hadn’t really spoken about him before, there’s nothing you can really say about that. I just took it in and reflected on it.
Before, if I’d ever started to think about him, I’d pushed it to the back of mind – like a natural coping mechanism, I guess you fear consuming yourself with thoughts you can’t possibly comprehend.
Just saying sorry would never be enough
The most powerful bit was when Joan, James’s mum, said ‘I see things as you were a young thug that hit James – it’s a grown man that sits before me now’.
I said that the last two-and-a-half years had been my way of trying to prove that I’m sorry for what I did because just going there and saying it in my eyes would never be enough.
They said ‘we want you to keep doing what you’re doing’ and that they knew I didn’t mean for what happened to happen.
I was grateful that I had their support. Well, on the one hand I felt grateful, but on the other hand I felt like I didn’t deserve their support. I wanted to say sorry but also ‘thank you’ as well. If they hadn’t come forward then the chances are I would still be going in and out of prison.
At the end we shook hands, then we agreed we would work together – to let people know of the damage that one punch can do.
We’re also raising awareness of restorative justice. A lot of people still don’t know what it is and although I’m an offender and it helped me, I realise the importance this process can have for people who have been harmed by crime.
It can be hugely beneficial, and being aware of it as an option is incredibly important in a criminal justice system that doesn’t often give victims a voice.
I’d also like to highlight the lack of support there is for offenders’ families and the unseen damage that can cause. My mother was an Ofsted-registered child minder before my crime and afterwards was told she could no longer do her job because I had been living with her. The last rating she got before I went to prison was ‘outstanding’.
She lost the only job she had known for the last 15 years because of my conviction and before I went to prison I had been living at her address while she was still registered as a child minder. In all that time I’d grown up with some of the kids she looked after and was proud of what she’d done – a single mum from the Meadows working for herself and having a mortgage.
This is something else I have to live with
Not only did she lose her job, she had a son convicted of manslaughter and was also looking after my younger brother. She was forced to sell her house. She lost everything and this proved too much.
She passed away a year after my release after suffering from depression.
She had no real support while I was in prison. This is something else I have to live with.
She knew before she died that I was trying to turn my life around but my point is people are far more likely to re-offend if they don’t come home to a stable household. Our family’s stability was slipping away the whole time I was inside through no fault of my mum’s.
A supportive, stable household on release has been widely recognised as an important factor in preventing people from re-offending. Should there be more support for offenders’ families? I believe there should be because ultimately the long-term social costs affect entire families – not just the person who ends up going back to prison when they get out.
Education has now improved my life, but I had to take part in it on release. There needs to be reform of the way education is applied in prison. Governors and prison management need to be more accountable for education in the same way as headteachers. Perhaps instead of measuring a prison mainly on its security, safety and conditions – measure it on how many prisoners come out with qualifications.
A young single man can’t go back into education on release because the benefits system won’t allow it. This means people’s time in prison is being wasted if there aren’t meaningful and varied pathways for them to get qualifications.
Organisations such as the Longford Trust offer support to people who have been in or are in prison to get on to university courses. They give each applicant a mentor and this is perhaps the most important part of what they do, alongside financial support.
They helped me get a place at university and offered support when other universities were refusing me a place due to risk assessment procedures. This was just another obstacle I had to navigate.
We also need to create spaces in prisons that encourage people to communicate and reflect on where they are and where they are going. A way in which prisons could facilitate this is by working more closely with outside organisations such as charities and universities.
Projects such as Learning Together by the Prisons Research Centre at the University of Cambridge bring prison students and university students together to complete short courses.
This kind of work can often end up being blocked by risk assessments. Is this kind of co-operation, or lack of it, another thing that prisons should be judged on? Prisoners should not be ‘out of sight out of mind’.
Before I took part in restorative justice I felt vulnerable and didn’t open up about my feelings because I didn’t want to look ‘weak’ in front of my peers.
However, to get to where I am today I’ve had to overcome a different type of vulnerability. I feared people would constantly be judging and assessing me because they were worried. I suppose there’s a doubt in the back of many people’s minds whether or not I really have changed.
Whether it comes from employers or institutions I’ve noticed there’s an over-emphasis on risk. The risk I might pose.
What is the point of punishment and prison if society won’t forgive and accept? It’s almost as if they are waiting for you to slip up.
In the end hopefully articles like this won’t even be written or read because there will be nothing unusual in what happened to me after my release. One day positive transformations like mine won’t be exceptions.
I hope what I’ve had to say over this series has offered a bit more of an insight into a part of our society which is hidden from mainstream life.
Although there are many changes that are needed to help more people turn their lives around, I hope reading this series has helped you believe it can be done.
If you have been affected by Jacob’s columns or would like to get involved in the One Punch campaign you can reach him on Twitter @jacobfreeeman or email [email protected].
