Real work

Real work in prison should find support from progressives on both sides of the political aisle

The Howard League for Penal Reform believes real work should be implemented in English and Welsh prisons. Real work requires an employment relationship between an external employer and the prisoner, in order to create a meaningful and realistic employee-employer relationship. The work should be suitably meaningful to inspire pride in the work done and should be fairly paid for the task undertaken, to create an incentive to work.

The progressive scheme supported by the Conservative party this week would see private organisations tendering to run a workshop within a prison. Workers involved in any project would be paid a fair wage for the work done. This wage would be taxable and charged national insurance in the normal way. The majority of the salary earned would not be spendable in prison but could be given to the worker’s family to support their lives and would be deducted as against any claims they made for state governed benefits.

Our proposals would see prisoners given the opportunity to engage with the real world of work and its responsibilities, instead of being paid as little as £4 per day to do menial and repetitive labour with no benefits to employability on release. The scheme would mainly target long-term prisoners, those in prison for four years or more. With over 30,000 prisoners currently serving such sentences, it is time we thought radically about how to productively fill the countless hours these individuals will experience in prison. Real work provides the answer.

Real work in prison would alleviate a burden on the welfare state, as the wages prisoners earned would help cut or reduce benefits otherwise handed out to prisoners’ families. Allowing prisoners to contribute to their family’s welfare while incarcerated may serve to hold the family unit together. Further, it could serve to end the cycle of state dependence that long-term prisoners are often caught up in once released from prison; as they would now hit the streets with new found skills and a relationship with an employer on the outside.

Many prisoners would leap at the chance to abandon their bunks for the opportunity to do real work in prison. When the Howard League tested a real work scheme at Coldingley Prison, the design studio Barbed, our employees were so eager they would have worked weekends if prison authorities had allowed it.

The Conservatives have taken the lead on work in prisons so far. However, there is no reason this scheme cannot be consensual territory between all political parties. Indeed, supporters of real work in prison who came to visit Barbed when it was in operation ranged from Cherie Booth QC to Nick Herbert MP.

To the right, real work in prison appeals to notions of state efficacy and community-level resettlement, while strengthening the family unit. To the left, this scheme should signal reintegration through fair employment and an opportunity to aid the socially deprived where the state previously failed. To both this is a real chance to cut the prison population in the long-term. Real work in prison has a broad appeal and should find support from progressives on both sides of the political aisle.

Frances Crook is director of The Howard League for Penal Reform

11 Sep 2009 12:05

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