I worked with young offenders for years – positive role models could have changed everything for them

I was 21 when I first started working with offenders. I was fresh out of university, full of energy and not quite ready to sit behind a desk. In my job, I found myself supporting some of the most vulnerable people in our society – young people transitioning out of the justice system, and older ones still stuck in it. They lived in supported accommodation through Telford council’s social rehabilitation service, and I was there to keep them safe.

Sometimes that meant helping them get to college, or sitting quietly alongside them before a family visit. Other times it meant simply being someone who showed up – walking them to the corner shop, playing pool, or helping them put structure into a life that had none. I wasn’t technically a teacher, or a social worker, or a therapist. But in many respects, my role straddled all of these jobs. The best way I can describe it is this: I was like a guardian angel with a keycard. To the offenders though, I was just Jason. And because I was young myself, I wasn’t seen as a threat. I wasn’t an authority figure. I was a human being they could relate to. That made all the difference.

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Most of the people I worked with, both young and older offenders, had grown up in chaos – neglect, abuse, broken homes, no stability. Some had no literacy skills, no life skills, and no sense of what “normal” could even look like. One boy had traded his Xbox for a bag of chips because he was hungry. Another girl continued to put herself in the path of abuse – not because she didn’t know better, but because “being used” was the only way she’d ever felt needed. 

These people would be homeless if it wasn’t for the rehabilitation service. Because, ultimately, they were alone, with no one within their family or friendship orbit looking out or rooting for them. I remember one lad who was constantly stood up by his father, who always promised – so earnestly – to visit. Watching him get crushed each time his father failed to show up was hard. These already vulnerable individuals were primed to be exploited; to be taken advantage of; to be let constantly down. All they craved for was validation and approval. What hit me the hardest was how few of them had ever had a role model. Not one person who showed them what was possible. No one who said, you’re worth something – or better yet, here’s how far you could go. And without that kind of reflection, their sense of self-worth just… never formed. It was difficult for them to visualise a future that looked like anything but struggle.

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They’d grown up in the shadow of bad role models, or no role models at all. And I learned very quickly: it’s sometimes better to have no example than a damaging one. Because a bad role model doesn’t just fail you – they convince you there’s nothing better waiting. That truth stayed with me. And for a long time after I quit work within the public sector for a career in the financial one, I thought: what became of the people I supported? What would an alternative upbringing have meant for their future? 

Today, it’s what fuels my work as a children’s author. Because I’ve seen, firsthand, what can happen when a child grows up without ever seeing themselves in a positive light. And I believe – deeply – that if we can get that reflection right early on, we might just change everything; infuse a kernel of hope that there is a better way of being and living. It’s what led me – years later – to start Butterfly Books, an independent publishing company I co-founded with my sister, Kerrine Bryan. She’s an award-winning engineer – one of the few Black women in her field – and together we’ve made it our mission to create children’s books that show young people exactly what the people I worked with never saw: themselves, thriving.

Our stories feature parents and role models that reflect real life in all its diversity. A dad who’s a nurse. A mum who’s a soldier. Girls who become firefighters and engineers. Black professionals. Women in science. Representation isn’t just about “seeing yourself.” It’s also about everyone learning to expect more from each other.

There is an enormous cost to growing up unseen. It doesn’t necessarily just show up in crime statistics – it shows up in silence, in resignation, and in lost potential. And the thing is, it starts young. I once overheard a teenage girl in an O2 shop say she wouldn’t apply to university because her aunt told her it wasn’t for “people like us”. That mindset – that casual inheritance of limitation – is exactly what we’re trying to interrupt.

This year marks my tenth year in publishing, and I can say this with certainty: if a child sees themselves reflected in a story with dignity and possibility, we are planting something powerful. Because when we change the stories children read, we can change the stories they believe about themselves. And that can be transformational.

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