Can ex-prisoners lead a reformed life after crime and punishment? Angela Devlin, whose new book Going Straight is published this week, talked to former criminals who had broken with their past. They were frank about how difficult it is to change. BOB CUMMINES was once a professional hitman. Someone could have said to me, ?There?s a bloke there, we want him shot in the legs. How much?? And I would think about it and make an estimate. That sounds terrible and it is terrible. But you could detach yourself from it. As for my victims, it wasn?t personal ? they weren?t people, they were just ?bits of work?.

Cummines served long prison sentences for armed robbery and manslaughter. He was a violent and dangerous prisoner, constantly involved in prison riots, and held at top-security jails like Parkhurst alongside the Kray twins. His life now is very different. At the age of 47 he is a happily married father, living in a peaceful country village and holding down a steady job with a housing association. Meeting him, his teacher wife Lynn and their small daughter in their cosy cottage, it seems inconceivable that here is a man who never opened his front door without a gun behind it for fear of reprisals from gangland enemies.

We read a great deal about crime and criminals, a police officer once said to me, but we never hear much about people who?ve given up crime, people who?ve gone straight.

The officer was right. There is an enduring public appetite for stories of criminal lives. Crime sells newspapers and gangster films are regular box-office successes, creating spurious role models by glamorising the criminal. The young idolise a New York rap group called Fun Lovin? Criminals and the current fashion for ultra-baggy jeans worn low on the hips began in the United States in emulation of prisoners whose belts have been taken away from them.

But such iconography of crime is far from the reality. Committing offences and going to jail are not glamorous, but sordid and destructive. As Bob Cummines puts it: In crime there are no winners, only victims.

An extraordinary incident prompted Cummines?s first step on the path to reform. In Maidstone Prison he was half-way through a 12-year sentence when he was told that his mother had only a few more days to live, and was offered compassionate leave for a final visit. He refused to go to see her in handcuffs, as he had once done before. It didn?t do her any good to see me like that. But then the head of the prison education department suddenly came along and offered to take him in his car. If I can get permission, the officer said to him, will you promise me you won?t have a mob there waiting to take you out?

Cummines thought about it for a long time, then accepted. I went back to him and said: ?You?ve put the worst type of handcuff on me, because if I give you my word I?ve got to stick by it.?

They went to his mother?s house in north London. The prison officer left Cummines in the bedroom with her all afternoon while he sat downstairs and had a cup of tea with the family. He totally trusted me. I could have walked out of the front door just like that, but it never entered my head because I?d given him my word. At the end of the visit we got in the car and he said, ?Are we going back?? and I said, ?Yeah, we?re going back?. None of the prison officers had expected it, he learnt. They had been taking bets that Cummines would abscond.

As we drove back to the jail, Cummines recalls, I felt incredible respect for this guy sitting next to me. And I felt incredible respect for myself too, because I hadn?t let him down. I think it was then that I started getting some feeling for other people. That turned me round.

This story encapsulates some key elements in the process of reform: for Cummines, a single powerful experience, an unexpected act of mercy and trust, was the catalyst for change. And Cummines?s incipient feeling for other people led him eventually to put a face to those anonymous victims from whom he had so chillingly detached himself as a professional hitman.

This same sense of detachment is described by John Bowers, now the editor of a well-established prison newspaper, Inside Time. For years he was a professional burglar: Even now, out on a stroll, I walk past nice houses and there?ll be a guy out in his garden. He?ll nod and smile and I?ll think, ?There was a time when I?d have burgled that guy and I wouldn?t have known him from Adam!? There wouldn?t have been anything personal in it. It would have been deeply personal to him of course, but not to me.

Perhaps most vital was a sensation obviously new to Cummines, which he describes as an incredible respect for himself. This is what prisoners lack. They often became involved in crime as teenagers in an attempt to belong, and in prison they sometimes achieved the spurious status of top dog. But on release, as one put it, You?re just a nothing, a nobody, signing on.

The murderer Hugh Collins, a product of the Glasgow gangs, was released in 1993 after serving 16 years for the brutal killing of a gang rival. In prison I knew where I stood. I had power in there, I had a reputation, I was a somebody. That first day outside, I was full of heroin before nightfall, desperately trying to figure out a way to get myself back into jail.

To leave crime behind, some offenders must discover an alternative to put in its place, to replace the adrenalin buzz which some find as addictive as drugs or alcohol. For Peter Cameron, serving 10 years for drugs smuggling, that buzz came in the form of newly discovered creativity. He won a prize from the Koestler Award Trust, set up to encourage the arts in prisons, for the first painting he ever did. When he saw it pictured in the Daily Telegraph, I got the same kind of buzz I got when I was pulling off one of those stunts in Morocco. Since his release seven years ago Cameron, with the support of Sir Stephen Tumim, the trust?s current chairman, has become a successful artist whose work is much in demand.

THERE are, of course, many other routes to self-respect. Some find it through a spiritual experience, and may even become ministers of religion. Others join self-help groups which enable them to conquer alcohol and drug dependency. Many attribute their salvation to personal relationships: maintaining successful family units, although they themselves rarely came from stable or supportive families, prevents them returning to crime.

Here is another key to breaking the cycle of criminality: the acquisition of a stake in society. These are people who now have something they cannot bear to lose: a job, a home, family relationships, achievements, some kind of status. Bob Cummines acknowledges that his new family responsibilities have transformed his attitude to the police. They used to be my enemy, but now they?re the protectors of my home and family. My little daughter?s got great respect for them. To her, policemen are people who help us, not people who persecute us, as they were when I grew up.

But Cummines is the first to admit that the 10 years since his release from prison have not been easy. When you?ve decided to change, it?s the loneliest thing in the world. There?s been lots of times I thought I?d capitulate and go back to crime. Getting a job is crucial to having a stake in society, but as so often happens, Bob?s hopes of finding work were dashed as soon as he declared his prison record: I wanted to be a straight guy, I wanted to be honest. I went for jobs but as soon as I declared my form ? smack ? the door was shut.

To tackle this obstacle to rehabilitation, Mark Leech, another ex-criminal, has set up Unlock, an organisation run by ex-offenders. It is pressing for a criminal records tribunal where those with criminal convictions can appeal for their slate to be wiped clean if they have been crime-free for a fixed period.

At present, this applies to anyone who is sentenced to 30 months? imprisonment or less. But for those given a longer sentence, their conviction is never spent. The actor Stephen Fry, who at 18 went to prison for credit card fraud, is a director of Unlock.

Unless we attempt to find out what makes criminals change, and try to create an environment where change can take place, there will be yet more victims.

Lives can be turned around. Terry Mortimer, once a burglar, is now a Pentecostalist minister: I can see the potential in anything, anyone. There is no such thing as someone beyond hope. There is no such thing.

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