New Bridge
New Bridge was founded in 1956 to create links between the offender and the community. The intention is not to forget the victims of crime but to prevent more people becoming victims.
Our Vision
Since 1956 New Bridge has been working to create links between offenders and the community. We offer services to
help prisoners keep in touch with the outside world and prepare themselves to rejoin it. The intention is not to
forget victims of crime but to prevent more people becoming victims.
What we do
New Bridge befriends and mentors prisoners via our national network of volunteers. Our core service is our
unique befriending project which supports over 300 prisoners each year. We have bespoke mentoring projects in
London and the North bringing intensive mentoring and befriending support to short-term prisoners and vulnerable
female offenders.
How we work
Over 200 volunteers write, visit and provide support to over 400 prisoners and ex-offenders on a regular basis
bringing humanity and hope for a crime free future.
“I trusted nobody, had no faith in people and couldn’t ask for help, everything was bottled up. Lonely, isolated, no family, no friends.”
Many of our beneficiaries need long term support and we work with them for as long as we are needed regardless of their crime. New Bridge volunteers are attached to prisoners not prisons so can remain in contact when prisoners are moved around the country.
“The key to my changing was New Bridge via their prison visitors, I regained my family and I found new friends. I was no longer alone”
In 2010, 183 volunteers travelled a total of 95,496 miles to make 300 visits and 7,336 letters were exchanged to 407 prisoners in 145 prisons and special hospitals in England and Wales.
