NEWS
RELEASE

It says stubbornly high re-offending rates, with almost two in three prisoners convicted of a crime within two years of release, demonstrate that current policies are letting down society and taxpayers alike.

In a new report, the CBI details the enormous cost of crime for business and the public. It says the £60bn annual cost of crime is equivalent to five per cent of GDP, with the cost to business alone more than £9bn a year.

It says that treating prisoners with decency and having an end-to-end approach to offender management will help address re-offending, and that far closer attention should be paid to key issues such as drug dependency, behavioural problems and low skills, with specialist providers brought in to run tailored programmes.

Its report, Getting back on the straight and narrow, represents the first critique the CBI has made of the criminal justice system. It shows that re-offending rates have barely budged over the last ten years despite a 40 per cent real-terms increase in prison and probation spending over the period.

The CBI also says that despite a warning from the prisons watchdog that the policy is “fraught with risk” and threaten widespread disorder, ministers have agreed a proposal to reduce the hours prisoners spend out of their cells as part of a cost-cutting exercise.

John Cridland, CBI Deputy Director-General, said: "If the government now believes that prison is mainly about containing offenders, it should be up-front about that. But re-offending rates are already unacceptably high.

"Surely the government owes it to the public and to taxpayers to make prison a place that helps offenders turn around their lives and repay their debt to society.

“Punishment needs to go hand-in-hand with rehabilitation if the criminal justice system is really to work in the interests of all of us. Otherwise taxpayers will keep on paying for an endless merry-go-round of crime-court-custody.

"The criminal justice system must be seen to work."

The CBI says:

• Getting offenders into or back into work should be the number one priority for any plans to cut re-offending, especially by linking up offender management with the government's plans for welfare-to-work reform;
• Public confidence in non-custodial alternatives to prison such as tagging and community service must be increased as imprisonment is often costly and counterproductive;
• Delays over the prison programme and how new facilities are to be built are damaging and must stop. The key consideration is that new prisons are fully fit for purpose and designed to assist any new initiatives to reduce re-offending as well as provide efficient and effective security.

• National Grid’s Young Offender programme, which has reduced re-offending among those on the scheme to less than seven per cent from a national average of 75 per cent. It offers prisoners training while in prison and employment following release and 1,000 offenders have gone through the programme
• The G4S Transitional Support Scheme provides across-the-prison-gate mentoring support for offenders with substance abuse problems for up to 12 weeks after release and has been recognised by the Howard League for Penal Reform for its work
• Progress2work, delivered by Working Links, has moved more than 500 former substance abusers into further education and then into work, helping them remain there beyond the crucial first three months after release with tailored support.

• There should be a single offender risk management system. The Offender Management System (OASys) was intended to be this but its implementation has been poor, with sentence plans not routinely used to help decide how a prisoner spends time in custody
• Resettlement of ex-offenders should work within the wider welfare-to-work system, both before and after release. Outcomes-based payments should be used to incentivise providers to get ex-offenders into sustainable employment
• There should be greater use of community sentencing, while barriers to diverting and transferring offenders with mental health problems from prison should be removed
• The government should act quickly to build extra prison places and replace ageing prisons with modern, effective facilities
• There should also be a new performance management system that compares public and private prisons on a level playing field
• Prison or probation services not meeting agreed performance targets should be subject to market testing and providers replaced if they cannot improve.