January 2024

Our chief executive, Alasdair Jackson, has been honoured with an OBE in the 2024 New Year Honours list

Mr Jackson has been recognised for services to the rehabilitation of offenders.

As chief executive of our charity and social enterprise, he guides the teams delivering unrivalled reduced reoffending rates through our range of rehabilitation and residential programmes.

He said: “To be awarded an OBE is something I’d never thought would happen to me. I’ve never been so amazed, humbled and honoured.”

Mr Jackson first worked with offenders while working in operations for Preston Recycling, later Recycling Lives Ltd, which offered ‘day release’ work placements to men serving sentences at nearby HMP Kirkham. Seeing the positive impact work had on the men’s lives, Mr Jackson and other leaders at the business worked to broaden their rehabilitation offering. This saw the establishment of a dedicated, independent charity – Recycling Lives Charity & Social Enterprise – in 2008.

Mr Jackson was appointed as chief executive of the charity in 2018 and has since overseen expansion of our rehabilitative work, now working in 12 prisons and delivering a range of rehabilitation programmes in the community, as well as the establishment of two food-focussed programmes.

He added: “I have to thank all the men and women who have trusted us over the years and taken the opportunity to turn their lives around. They have changed my life too. This recognition really should go to everyone that I’ve worked with, for and on behalf of, in this crazy journey. It’s been an amazing team effort all the way.”