Founded 1980
Chair:        
Secretary: 
Treasurer: 

Graham Smith
Jan Thompson
Graham Mumby-Croft


Graham Smith
Discretionary time

There was a point in my so-called charmed career when I was a tutor at the Prison Service College Love Lane Wakefield and one of the many courses that I delivered was on aspects of management and in particular time management. A key issue with time management was the ability to create discretionary time this was to allow managers to actually sit and think about what they were doing and how they were going to achieve it rather than constantly getting caught up in the operational task. Anyone remember the “monkey “?

There were numerous other theories including the 80/20 rule where 20% of your time produced 80% of the results and vice versa and also that work will always expand to fill available time.

During one of my moments of now increased discretionary time, it occurred to me that members of the Association must have many examples of what they now do with their discretionary time during their retirement.



On my list, I would include singing in a male voice choir, invigilating exams at university, sitting as a magistrate, chairman of the Retired Prison Governors Association, secretary of my local PROBUS club interspersed with numerous holidays etc.

I would like to share with you a particular pastime of mine which is as a Victim Support Volunteer. I would expect that many of our members would fit the criteria as a volunteer because we do understand the judicial process and there is an irony in reversing our role of managing offenders and then helping and supporting victims of crime. Anyone can apply for the role through the national victim support website and there is a training requirement of around one week on a daily basis. The skills required easily overlap to those that we used in our governor role and having been a volunteer for around five years I think the higher level of maturity of the volunteer the easier it is to offer appropriate support with confidence.

I usually have around four cases running at a time but you can easily reduce or increase numbers as you 
wish with your local coordinator. Cases are allocated to you and generally speaking you would visit the victims in their home usually a short time over the incident. There are occasions when, following a risk assessment, it is deemed not safe to visit at the victim’s home and the visit will then take place at an independent location, in West Yorkshire that is often in a local library. There is also an option to assist with fundraising as victim support is a registered charity although partly funded by the Ministry of Justice.

If you have created discretionary time that you can use to help others then why not? Your skills and experience for those in need is appropriate and I assure you that your past career will be of high benefit when dealing with crime victims. Having said that I do not share with my victims the fact that I was in the Prison Service or a JP makes as it makes things too complicated.



Very often the victim will simply want to talk to someone independent about what happened and the impact it has had on them. The support I generally offer is for advice on criminal injuries compensation, court processes, dealing with the police, health, insurance claims and I generally remain in contact with the victim for just a few weeks mostly by phone.



Whilst reflecting on my volunteering for Victim Support I wondered how many others in our membership contribute through volunteering and I know that our editor would be delighted to hear from anyone with a hobby, pastime or other options of filling discretionary time in retirement.



Graham Smith

 Issue No. 77 Autumn 2017