Clarke aims to ensure inmates work hard in prisons

PRISONERS will be expected to work 40-hour weeks and have part of their pay docked to compensate victims in a major move to get inmates working.

Justice Secretary Ken Clarke will announce the scheme today with prisoners carrying out work for private firms to teach them skills and get them ready for life when they finished their sentence.

From sorting recycled materials to inputting data, Mr Clarke will pledge a huge roll-out of “prison industries” in a move to make jails places of “hard work and industry” where inmates able to work are expected to do so.

Hide Ad
Hide Ad

He will also reveal plans to dock around a fifth of their wages to create a victims’ compensation fund worth at least 1m a year, while more of their earnings could be taken in future to repay the cost of their prison stay or help to support family members to ease the burden on the taxpayer.

“I want to revive a policy of John Major’s last Conservative government and make deductions from the earnings of working prisoners to provide compensation for victims of crime,” Mr Clarke will say in his conference speech.

“In order to raise those funds, we need to instil in our jails a regime of hard work.

“Most prisoners lead a life of enforced, bored idleness where getting out of bed is optional.

Hide Ad
Hide Ad

“If we want to reduce the crimes these people will commit when they get out, whilst boosting the amount that can be provided for victim support, we need as many prisoners as possible to work hard for regular working hours.

“We have to try to get those people who have the backbone, to go straight. To handle a life without crime when they have finished their punishment.

“So we will make it easier for prison governors to bring more private companies into their jails to create well-run businesses, employing prisoners in regular, nine to five jobs.”

At the moment, Crewe and Nantwich MP Edward Timpson’s family firm Timpsons does work in prisons, as do the National Grid and Cisco Systems.

Hide Ad
Hide Ad

In open prisons, some low-risk inmates even leave the site to carry out work in preparation for their release.

Mr Clarke wants to see more firms getting involved to give prisoners something to keep them occupied and a purpose to their life.

Currently the majority of prisoners do not or cannot work during their sentence, but under Mr Clarke’s plan they would be paid the minimum wage.

He will enact legislation passed in 1996 but never implemented which will allow money to be deducted from prisoners’ pay for work done outside the jail to compensate victims, and wants to extend it to include work inside the prison as well.

Aides stress that the operation will not take jobs away from the ordinary workforce, and positions are likely to be those which currently rely on migrant labour or are difficult to fill.