What gym PBs, prison reform, and a new ASEL initiative have in common

Last week was a bit of a milestone in the Fisher household.

My wife turned 40 and we celebrated properly.

I hired out a pub, filled it with family and friends, and we had a cracking night.

The next day we slowed things down a bit with a trip to one of those posh garden centres where you get cream teas and scones stacked with clotted cream. I even bought my own jar of double blackcurrant jam from the farm shop because the restaurant stuff wasn’t cutting it.

And somewhere in the middle of all that, I hit another personal best at the gym.

That’s three PBs in two weeks. I squatted 155kg, which is 15kg above anything I’ve done before… It’s a good feeling when consistent effort pays off.

This week has been a very different pace, though.

I’ve spent today going from head office in London to several tubes, to a random pub in Paddington, to a hotel lobby, and now I’m about to head back across the city… And tomorrow I’m in Swansea.

It’s one of those weeks packed full of meetings and travel, but that’s one of the parts I actually enjoy. You meet new people, you get new ideas, and you always come back with something worth thinking about.

One thing that has stayed with me this week came from an article I read about prison reform.

The Justice Committee has warned that dire prison conditions – overcrowding, staffing shortages, decaying buildings – are undermining any hope of rehabilitation.

None of that was surprising. What did stand out was the stark reminder that 80% of offending in England and Wales is reoffending. That number alone tells you the system isn’t doing what it’s supposed to.

Prisons are meant to protect the victim and reduce risk going forward, but they’re so stretched that they can’t adequately support rehabilitation. And the more pressure we pile on, from backlogs to proposals to scrap juries for offences carrying sentences under three years, the more obvious it becomes that the whole chain is under strain.

You can try to speed up the court process, but if nothing changes inside the prisons themselves, or before people end up there in the first place, you’re not solving the problem.

For me, rehabilitation doesn’t start at the point of sentencing. It should start long before that through early intervention, support, guidance, and structured pathways that stop young people becoming prolific offenders in the first place. And for adults already in that cycle, especially those locked into substance misuse, sending them through the system again and again doesn’t fix anything. Treating them outside of prison often makes far more sense.

That’s why January is an important month for us at ASEL. We’ll be launching a new opportunity: a charitable foundation designed to bring sectors together to tackle exactly this issue.

Through our Step Up work on antisocial behaviour, and now through a dedicated focus on prolific and persistent offenders, we’re looking to support solutions that don’t just move the problem around but genuinely interrupt the cycle.

We’ll be running a series of events and challenges next year to help drive this forward.

As I was thinking about all this – my wife’s birthday, the PBs at the gym, a week full of trains and meetings, and then national conversations about rehabilitation – it struck me that the theme is the same.

Progress doesn’t happen because you make one big move or announce one big initiative. It happens because you keep showing up and keep doing the work. Whether it’s lifting heavier weights, fixing broken systems, or giving someone the support they need to change their path, consistency is what makes the difference. And that’s where the real work starts.