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Rehabilitation of Prisoners

: That is an interesting point. Functional illiteracy among the prison population is a major issue; it is one of the indicators of likelihood of offending. We acknowledge that the Prison Service has made great strides in the past few years in terms of adult basic education and skills. About 10 per cent. of all adult basic education qualifications are achieved in prison; that is significant. The difficulty is that, if we look at this matter from the point of view of the individual, making somebody functionally literate may be a necessary step towards enabling them to get a job, but it is a long way from getting them into a job. Gaps appear to open up in the process when we look at the career of an individual offender and ask, ““What happens next?”” The way the system is managed, the Prison Service can tick its box and say, ““We've got this prisoner to the level of adult basic skills that is necessary,”” but the next bit might not happen. That process probably creates a slightly more literate reoffender, rather than somebody who will go on to get a job. The important thing is to join up the system. We should not move away from the focus on adult basic education as a starting block, but neither should we limit the system so that when people get to that educational level there is no further progression in respect of real work-related skills. Adult basic skills are an essential element of this system, but perhaps the system is not quite right at present because the focus has been almost exclusively on it, rather than on the things that need to follow on from it. I have spoken for longer than I intended. I hope that I have set the scene in terms of some of the main themes in our report.