The Justice Secretary plans to call on big brand high street retailers later this month to try and encourage them to recruit former prisoners in a bid to cut reoffending rates.
The move comes on top of the coalition government’s decision in March to make former prisoners join its Work Programme immediately on their release or lose their benefits.
The aim is to try and tackle high unemployment levels among ex-offenders as part of an attempt to cut crime rates.
To this end, Kenneth Clarke plans to invite up to 40 retailers, including Marks & Spencer, DHL and Iceland, to a Downing Street reception later in May to discuss how they can both benefit from and contribute to his proposals as part of their corporate social responsibility activities.
On top of his recruitment drive, Clarke will also encourage the employers to provide inmates with training and work-related experience, while also suggesting that prisoners are employed directly by private firms while still in jail.
He told the BBC: “I want eventually to see businesses manufacturing, providing services, from prisons on a commercial basis. There’s no reason why they shouldn’t help pay for themselves and the cost of prison.”
Controversial moves
The government is working with the CBI to ensure that any new measures guard against unfair competition with other businesses, he added.
Training and work experience provision will be organised by One3One Solutions, a new scheme that is expected to replace the Prison Industries Unit.
Clarke told the Guardian: “Getting somebody into a steady job upon release from prison is one of the most successful ways of getting them to stop reoffending. With support from organisations like Timpson, we can make a real difference to the lives of prisoners and their families and, above all, a reduction in the victims of crime.”
The shoe repair chain has a policy of actively recruiting ex-offenders, but has also set up a full-time training facility at Liverpool and Wandsworth prisons.
But the move could prove controversial at a time of high unemployment. A spokesman for the GMB union said: “If the main object of government policy is to bring the prison population into the workforce instead of rehabilitation, we would be strongly against it.”
There were already two million people on benefits who were looking for work and the idea of “bypassing them and undermining the national minimum wage is frankly ludicrous and unacceptable”, he added.
