Northampton magistrate's work to reduce re-offending sees him awarded the MBE

David Apparicio established the Northampton-based Chrysalis Foundation in 2009 after witnessing the same handful of offenders appearing at the town's magistrates court on repeat occasions.

The charity aims to make positive changes to the lives of convicted criminals across the country through a series of courses linked to prisons and the probation service.

It has been successfully implemented in the Northern Territory of Australia for the unemployed, homeless and in schools.

Yesterday evening, the current JP and former head of learning and development at the Royal Mail, was confirmed as a recipient of the MBE in the Queen's New Year Honours list for 2019.

He said: "I got so frustrated with seeing the same people in front of me in court over and over again.

"I thought why is it like this? Why is it that 75 per cent of people go on to re-offend.

"As a business model, we would never accept that level of failure in the private sector. "

Mr Apparicio said magistrates see people come to court with a variety of needs 'beyond the crime they have committed."

"Because we can't address those needs all we do is punish," he said. "so the situation just keeps carrying on again and again."

In response, he set up the Lottery-funded foundation in 2009 while he was stil working at the Royal Mail and as a magistrate.

By encouraging offenders to think positively its courses considerably help to improve offenders' self-esteem and self-belief.

Its participants get one to one mentoring during the course, which helps them to reintegrate into society and break the cycle of offending.

"I just looked rehabilitation programmes were having the greatest impat and the same sort of ones kept coming back up," said dad-of-four Mr Apparicio.

"I thought what if we took the best bits from all the programmes and rolled them into one?"

Now the foundation works with prisons, schools and probation services up and down the country - though Mr Apparicio still sits as a JP at Northampton Mamgistrates' Court.