Offer prisoners skills, says CBI

28 Apr 05
State contracts with private companies running prisons should be designed to provide more help to former offenders seeking jobs, the CBI has said.

29 April 2005

State contracts with private companies running prisons should be designed to provide more help to former offenders seeking jobs, the CBI has said.

John Williams, the business organisation's director of public services, said contracts could include targets that reflect the needs of the labour market.

In a speech on April 21, Williams said it was vital that offenders and former prisoners were given training that they not only needed while working in prisons but also in the wider world. 'Interpersonal and service skills that are so important in the growing service economy could be emphasised, in tandem with basic literacy and numeracy skills,' he said.

There were, he said, 'insufficient incentives within the criminal justice system for training and placing offenders in employment'. Contracts could offer rewards to companies that achieved this.

The establishment last year of the National Offender Management Service, which seeks to reduce re-offending, could see the expansion of the private sector in prison management.

Some 90% of people who leave prison have no job and more than half of those on probation are unemployed, government figures show. Home Office research found that prisoners released from jail without a job were twice as likely to re-offend.

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