High Sheriff of Berkshire Charles Brims targets reoffending for his year in office

Mr Brims, of Brimpton, is involved in several Berkshire businesses.
He is a director of Newbury News Limited and a director of the Greenham Common Trust.
Outside the county, he is chairman of McMullen & Sons Limited, an independent brewery in Hertford, and is a director of three separate local media groups based in Cumbria, the West Midlands and Kent.
Although born and brought up in Northumberland, Mr Brims has spent most of his adult life in Berkshire.
Together with his wife Patricia, he lives at Brimpton Lodge, where his wife’s parents lived before them and from which the couple were married in 1973.
Mrs Brims teaches at Bradfield College.
She is the chairwoman of governors at Brimpton Primary School and is also a governor of an independent girls’ school in Oxfordshire.
Both Mr and Mrs Brims take an active part in village life and Mr Brims, who was educated at Winchester College, and read modern history at Brasenose College, Oxford, is presently the chairman of Brimpton Parish Council.
The couple have two grown up sons, David and Edward.
Mr Brims said on Monday that he planned to use his year in office to see what people were doing in Berkshire (often voluntarily) to make it a better place.
He said: “In particular, I want to focus on the problem of the high rate of re-offending by released prisoners.
“Currently, 60 per cent of ex-prisoners are caught re-offending within two years of release from prison.
“This is a terrible statistic which represents a great financial and social cost for all involved.
“I want to talk to as many people as possible, including ex-prisoners, to understand why this happens; and to see what people in Berkshire are already doing to try to address the problem.”
Among those who attended Monday’s ceremony were the Assistant Chief Constable of Thames Valley Police, the mayors of the county’s six unitary authorities and representatives of the county’s judiciary.