Prison gigs in a Dominican Republic prison

My old friend the British Ambassador!

You may be wondering what prison gigs have to do with a British Ambassador?

From the age of 4 yrs I have been friends with Andy Ashcroft. We met as pupils at a local infant school and have been friends ever since. Andy followed a career with the British Foreign Office and became British Ambassador to the Domincan Republic in 2002. Andy served in this post until June 2006 and has now retired from the foreign office and is working as an international business consultant. It was Andy`s posting to the DR that caused me to pay my first visits to the country [see photo right Mike left, Andy right]

The Dominican Republic's prisons project

The British Government had been supporting a project for reform of the Dominican Republic's prison system since 2003. This was part of HMG's Caribbean regional security support programme, within which it works with governments in the region to improve overall security, including police, prisons, combatting drugs trafficking and violent crime.

At that time conditions in Dominican prisons had been strongly criticised by international NGOs, including Amnesty International.

New model prisons in Dominican Republic

The Dominican Government started to implement Dr Andrew Coyle's main recommmendation, the established of a professionally trained (to international/UN standards) independent prison service.

Four new "model prisons" were established under the new programme, with several more in the pipeline. The new women's prison was at Najayo, a few kilometres West of the country's capital, Santo Domingo. It was the second "new model" prison to be inaugurated in March 2005, with Andy Ashcroft the British Ambassador and Nicholas Brooke in attendance.

Najayo women`s prison had 202 inmates. Like the other new model prisons, it was a great success and had generated a very positive response from the inmates, who were provided with a daily programme of education and activities geared to rehabilitation.

These new prisons have showed very positive results in respect of a drastic reduction in those re-offending on release.

prison gigs [cont]

The Director of Prisons Training in Dominican republic is Roberto Santana.

Roberto is a popular and extremely well known figure throughout the country as he also has a twice weekly current affairs TV show on national television.

One night Andy Ashcroft was sharing a bottle of wine with Roberto and discussing how to raise the profile of the prisons project. They both realised that they were musicians. Andy plays trumpet and piano, Roberto plays acoustic guitar and sings Dominican folk songs. After a number of glasses of wine they decided that the best way to raise the prisons profile was for them to to play a gig in the new Najayo women`s prison!

So the plan was born, a British Ambassador and the Dominican Republic Director prison training would play a gig to the prisoners !!!

Of course in the cold light of day, Andy and Roberta Santana, needed to work out exactly how this would work.

Our band needed a name and Roberto came up with the name of Los Tres Rebeldes, the three rebels. In his case this was particularly true as he had a number of brushes with the authorities regarding political issues when he was a young man. Indeed it is impossible to imagine a Director of Prison training having such high regard amongst the prisoners as that enjoyed by Roberto Santana.

prison gigs [cont]

The Accelerators

During that time we had regularly played gigs throughout the West of England but were best known for our jokey original Christmas song entitled `Christmas is a pain in the arse`.

This song had received national airplay on BBC Radio Two in England and on top UK TV soap Emmerdale. It still sells around the world every year via downloads.

I had also completed a solo album entitled `Never say never`.

During a number of trips to the Dominican Republic I had become very fond of the country so when Andy asked if I would join them, I readily accepted. After all, apart from Johhny Cash playing at San Quentin, I had never heard of another gig in a prison.