Café 16 marked five years at the weekend, and the anniversary brought the BBC through the door.
BBC Radio Newcastle’s Michael Poulter came to the café inside Newcastle Cathedral to talk to the people who run it. He spoke to assistant manager Fraser, catering operations manager Clare Guiney, and our chief executive Fiona Sample about why Café 16 was set up and what five years of it has produced. The interview is available on BBC Sounds.
A BBC News article followed, written by Tom MacDougall and Michael Poulter, under the headline “Cafe serving up second chances says it curbs reoffending”.
The numbers behind five years
Since opening in 2021, Café 16 has helped 64 prison leavers into work.
Around 37% of people sentenced to prison or a court order in England and Wales go on to reoffend, and the North East has the highest reoffending rates in the country. Of the people The Oswin Project has supported, Fiona told the BBC that 3% have reoffended.
“They are grateful, they are focused, and they are determined to prove themselves,” she said.
She was clear about what the alternative looks like. “Coming out and being homeless, having no purpose, and having no hope. What would you do? You’d end up going back to prison.”
She was equally clear about why this work matters beyond the people in it. “There are some crimes that are completely unacceptable, and I understand with every crime, there’s a victim. But we want to build safer communities and ensure fewer victims of crime by stopping reoffending, or reducing it greatly.”
What the work actually involves
Every item of food sold in the café is baked by men at HMP Northumberland, through our partnership with the category C prison. The training starts inside and continues on the outside.
Fraser, now assistant manager, was released into a hostel and knows what the first weeks are like. “It’s building trust with people, getting released to the public again, and building bridges with normal, civilian life, rather than that jail life.”
For him, that meant rebuilding relationships with family and getting into work. The café gave him new skills, and he has been here ever since.
Not everyone stays, and that is the point. As Clare Guiney told the BBC, many people will not want to work in a café long term, but the job gives them “that oomph” to go and find something else or to build the confidence to try.
“It’s just amazing watching them grow,” she said.
Why the coverage matters now
Prisons in England and Wales are at around 97% capacity. The government has announced £110m from existing budgets to convert offices, laundry rooms and storage space into cells, and a new early release scheme is due to start in October, creating roughly 4,500 spaces.
More than 70,000 prisoners were released under the last scheme in 2024. Prison governors have told the BBC that those prisoners are returning to jail at a rapid rate.
Releasing people is one thing. Giving them somewhere to go, a wage, a reference and a reason to get up is another, and it is the part that decides whether they come back.
Five years, 64 people into work, and a café in a cathedral that keeps proving the point.
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