The probation service, Napo, estimates there are some 8,500 former service personnel currently in prison – around 10% of the total prison population - a disproportionately large number of soldiers behind bars.
Andrew Neilson, assistant director of the Howard League said "Our inquiry is hovering around this question of the extent to which former soldiers are in the prison system because of the pressures of active service, and the extent to which the real culprit is actually poverty," Neilson said. "The army traditionally finds recruits from disadvantaged communities and many will return to those communities on leaving the services."
Andy McNab, the former SAS soldier turned best-selling author, said "An average reading age within infantry is 11, but the army will recruit from a reading age of seven. The usual period an infantry soldier will stay in the army is between four to six years. When they leave the army, they will usually go back to the same environment they came from and often tried to escape by joining the army. They still have low literacy levels and, as infantry is very transient, no attachment to any other place..." He added with few qualifications or skills, a person's employment chances were limited once out of the army, where its "tribal system" had looked after them.Given their lack of preparation for civilian life, it was inevitable, he said, that some would encounter problems and end up in the criminal justice system.
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