I am pleased to announce that the Prisons Strategy White Paper has been published today.
Our prisons keep the public safe by taking dangerous offenders off our streets. They must also tackle the underlying drivers of reoffending to cut crime and keep the public safe.
This White Paper sets out this Government’s plans to meet these strategic objectives, through establishing safe and secure conditions, opportunities for prisoners to reform and undergo rehabilitation, and the necessary incentives and accountabilities for the prison system as a whole.
The document includes plans for, but not limited to:
- delivery of the biggest prison building programme in more than 100 years, with almost £4 billion to create up to 20,000 additional prison places to help us to meet demand as tougher sentencing rules come in and the courts clear backlogs
- a zero tolerance approach to weapons, drugs and contraband in prisons, disrupting criminal activity from within the prison walls and, crucially, ensuring good order and discipline in our estate so that staff and prisoners are safe and can focus on the purposeful activity which reduces reoffending
- using the prison system to get more prisoners off drugs, by improving drug testing and delivering access to a full range of drug and mental health treatment, including abstinence-based drug treatment options, with stronger continuity of drug treatment on release
- an improved Prisoner Education Service, which ensures prisoners have access to a range of services to improve skills, such as literacy and numeracy, acquire qualifications, and is focused on opening up employment opportunities for prisoners on release;
- transforming the opportunities for work in prisons and on Release on Temporary License (ROTL) to increase job prospects for prison leavers, by holding Governors to account for the job opportunities and outcomes they achieve for prisoners.
- providing the basics that offenders need to live crime-free lives (such as a CV, setting out the qualifications, skills and work experience gained in custody, ID and conditions of release) through a system of ‘passports’ to better aid resettlement and investing £200 million a year by 2024-25 to transform our approach to rehabilitation
- to achieve these strategic objectives, empowering Governors to innovate locally, whilst still operating with and being assessed against clear outcome measures that align to the Government’s priorities
- clear, public and transparent prison performance statistics with published Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) for prisons and league tables to compare performance and spread best practice, ensuring success is measured against our priorities: security and stability; substance misuse and mental health; and resettlement and family ties
- recruitment of an extra 5,000 prison officers and upskilling our existing staff by enhancing training, supervision, and qualifications; as well as making sure we hire the next generation of governors through an HMPPS fast-track scheme
- modernising our prisons with digital infrastructure so that prisoners have autonomy over their in-prison affairs, and staff have a reduced bureaucratic burden, enabling them to work more efficiently.
The full package of proposals will help us bring down the rates of reoffending, which cost our economy over £18 billion per year, beat crime and build back better – to make our communities safer, and level up opportunities across the country. This White Paper sets out what we will deliver over the next two years as well as our longer-term ten-year vision. The White Paper can be found at https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/prisons-strategy-white-paper.
A copy of this White Paper will be placed in the House.
Yours sincerely
RT HON DOMINIC RAAB MP