For a man whose slogan is “Prison to Premiership” it was a tense moment for Jamie Lawrence to find himself outside Brixton prison on a crisp winter’s morning, preparing to go back inside. He was here as a teenager, PN 2991LAWRENCE. He trots out his prison number, thinks about the boy he was then, the circumstances that allowed crime to seem like the easier option. Now 48, he braced himself to step back into his former life hoping he might strike some kind of chord with the prisoners of today. Whatever talks and workshops are on offer to them, not many can look them in the eye and level with them in the way he can.
He half smiles as he explains that these days he gets cleared by security. “Normally I was going in the sweat box before I was going in,” he says wryly. “It was nice to go through the gate. I got introduced to the boys. I was nervous as hell. There were 12 prisoners in a little room. I started sharing my story, from being in prison to getting out and turning my life around and playing in the Premiership and for my country. We challenged them with a few things about what they are going to do on release. ‘How can you not reoffend?’ That is so, so important.
“I had great vibes from those prisoners. Most of them want to change. But it’s a slippery slope. The same pitfalls are there. You go for a job and what’s the first question – ‘Do you have a criminal record?’. Say yes and they don’t give you a job. Say no and one month down the line they find out and sack you. It’s horrible. The streets will swallow them up.
“People say you are part of their ‘family’ and the next minute they have got you pushing drugs and doing this and that. You might try to make £20,000 but get nicked for it. You might get six years. But in those years you would earn more with a job in McDonald’s and have your freedom and be there to look after your kids. All those wasted years … For what? For nothing. We are trying to create a network, to mentor people when they come out, to help them to find a trade or proper work.”
He knows what it is like to come out and reoffend. He also knows what it is like to come out and be catapulted into the most incredible life. Lawrence’s football talent was his salvation. While serving his second sentence – four years for robbery and violence – on the Isle of Wight his ability caught the attention of the warders and he is forever thankful for the extraordinary leap of faith they took. They arranged for him to play for Cowes, the local semi‑professional team, while he was a serving prisoner.
“I was lucky because I had someone in the prison system who believed in me, who moved heaven and earth to let me out to go and fulfil my talent,” the former winger recalls. “For a prison officer and the governor to go out on a limb so that I could go out every weekend to play football? It could have gone wrong. They could have lost their job over that. For them to do that for me made me not want to let them down ever.”
The gamble was huge. “There was no security,” he says. “On a Saturday I got picked up. If we were playing on the mainland they would get me at 10 o’clock, we would go and play a game. Afterwards they would give me a few Guinnesses and then mints and chewing gum to mask it, then they would drop me back to prison. If I had a town visit, which means you get six hours out on a Sunday, my teammates would come and get me and give me the keys to their house so I could go and chill out with my girlfriend, which was massive for me. That’s when you know you are accepted.
“I still pinch myself now to feel that I was doing four years in Camp Hill, which was the worst prison for my sentence at the time, full of violence and drugs. I thought this was going to be my life forever. Then I came out and got my first contract at Sunderland. I made my debut live on ITV on the Sunday, against Middlesbrough. Everyone is watching me play football. One minute I am in Camp Hill prison, the next I am live on ITV.” They played Jailhouse Rock over the Tannoy. It could not have been crazier. He wonders whether that kind of transformation is unique.
Lawrence went on to play for Leicester and Bradford in the Premier League and win treasured caps for Jamaica. Still, he knows the line was a fine one and he had to be mentally strong to avoid falling back into bad habits. “When you have done no good, you feel you have to act a certain way. I was lucky. Because of the football I moved 300 miles away. Nobody knew me. I didn’t have to act a certain way. I could act the way I am meant to act, like a proper person.
“When I finished football I nearly went back into crime because that was all I knew. There is so much depression after we finish. I know I was depressed because I went out drinking all the time to mask it. You’ve still got bills coming in and all of a sudden you can’t cover them. I was nearly going down the wrong road again. All my mates are naughty and I could have been sucked back in. One of my best friends, who is doing a long sentence now, sat me down and said to me: ‘Do you want to be in the cell next to me? Sort your life out.’”
These days Lawrence focuses on a positive contribution thanks to sport. In addition to his new venture talking in prisons, he is assistant manager of Kingstonian and a personal trainer specialising in boxers and young footballers. He has worked with a number of players at Chelsea, including Ruben Loftus-Cheek, which prompts the question: why do they go externally for that when they have every refined facility available to them at Cobham?
“I am more raw,” Lawrence says. “I will get into your brain and I will test you like you have never been tested before. Ruben sent me a video and said I made him comfortable being uncomfortable. He worked his balls off. Once you get to that ceiling you have got to raise it again. That’s what I do to the boys all the time.
“I am not a great lover of academies. They set kids up to fail. They sell them a dream. They don’t work hard enough, they have no responsibilities whatsoever – they can’t even pay a bill. A lot of these boys come to me and I have to strip them bare, I have to break them down and then build them back up and change their whole outlook on life. Imagine you are getting £20,000 a week when you are 17 years old. Why do you need to improve?“Money don’t make you rich. It is what you have within you that makes you rich. In helping people I am rich in that.”
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