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Rehabilitation of Prisoners

: The hon. Gentleman, who is a very constructive member of the Committee, is absolutely right; there is something about the economics of the entire system that strikes one as decidedly odd. It costs an enormous amount of money to run the prison system—the cost is well over £30,000 per individual in the system per year—yet we do not do half enough to ensure that offenders are not likely to be equally expensive when they come out because they reoffend. So, my first point is that the prison regime needs to change, not bit by bit, but starting with a fundamental rethink by the Government and a real drive to change the nature of the prison regime. My second point is about the links between work and prisons while prisoners are serving their sentence. When we went to Germany, we saw the Tegel prison in Berlin. Committee members of all parties were impressed by the extensive system of day release for work in Berlin. It was at a level of security clearance that would not be allowed in this country. In other words, day release for work is not restricted to the category D prisoners whom we are used to going to work from our open prisons. This is a difficult issue for Governments and Oppositions, because if a prisoner offended while out of prison, it would guarantee tabloid headlines, widespread criticism and all the rest of it. None the less, in Germany we were told that Tegel prison managed to operate the system with remarkably low offending rates by prisoners, even though those prisoners had a higher level of security risk than those whom we allow to go out of prisons. That is something that the Government should seriously explore. One gets the impression—the Minister may be able to help us on this—that the Government have given a pretty blanket no to other than category D prisoners going to work outside prison, unless it is a prisoner on one of the new short sentences. I hope that that is not the case, because innovative thinking is necessary. Not everybody can be accommodated within ideas such as weekend prisons, which are now being piloted. Prisoners who are able to sustain a job while serving their prison sentence are much less likely to offend. My final point is about securing employment at the end of the prison sentence. The evidence seems to be pretty clear that if prisoners know that they have a job to go to and can work towards it, they are more likely not only to go into that job but to be in that job in a year or two's time. The innovative work by National Grid Transco has demonstrated that beyond reasonable doubt. That model needs to be extended more generally.