Over one year after opening, Cardiff’s prison charity restaurant The Clink is busier than ever, but most impressively none of its released employees have had to come back.
The charity aims to prepare prisoners for life after release in a rehabilitative environment, and it seems to be working. The Cardiff branch menu changes each week to give the staff more dishes to learn.
The Clink may look like any other restaurant with the tables as smartly dressed as the waiters, but when you look a little closer the walls are decorated with photographs and poems created by the prisoners.
“The whole idea is to change people’s perception of prisoners,” the general manager Jason Lawrence explains, “lots of people still question when they come in ‘Are they all prisoners?’ and yes, yes they are, and they are very, very skilled.”