'Jails are failing victims. Here's my vision for fixing them,' prison minister says

Jails are failing the victims of crime because inmates are being freed without rehabilitation only to commit further offences, the Prisons Minister has warned.

In his first interview in the role, James Timpson told the Mirror something was “clearly going wrong” when 80% of crimes were done by someone who had offended before. He said people are leaving jail addicted to drugs, with no qualifications and, he added, without “hope”. Lord Timpson set out his vision for prisons to be places where people are punished by their loss of freedom but are also rehabilitated to divert people from a life of crime.

Speaking about the prison system, he said: “I think it’s failing victims because it’s our job to keep the public safe. We want prisons to produce better citizens, not better criminals. We need to make sure that when they’re released, they’re no longer dangerous and the public is safe.”

His family business, the key cutting firm Timpson, is known for employing ex-offenders, who make up more than a tenth of its workforce. The appointment of a reform campaigner as Prisons Minister is seen as a shift from the Tory focus on prison expansion.

The new Labour government had to release thousands of prisoners early when the number of available places fell below 100 this summer. It has committed to creating 14,000 new prison places but also wants to reduce re-offending.

Lord Timpson spoke to the Mirror in South East London at the HQ of The Clink, which teaches prisoners and ex-offenders culinary skills. He emphasised the importance of employment in helping people turn their lives around and the need to “really focus on reducing re-offending” to tackle the prisons crisis.

Lord Timpson said: “There are too many people who are in prison and are not engaging with education because the prisons are so full. They're not gaining those skills so when they are released, they're not going to come back.

“And when prisons are 99.9% full, all you can really do is give them a shower, three meals a day and that's it. That's why you can walk past classrooms with lots of chairs and computers but no one's in them, and we can't have that.”

Asked for his vision for prisons, Lord Timpson, who has been visiting jails for 20 years, said: “For me, what a really good prison looks like is where prisoners are engaged. They are working through their sentence. They are not taking drugs.

“They're going to the lessons. They are engaging with their sentence. So when they're released, they know exactly what they need to do to not go back. And what's actually really important is, if you leave prison today, you want to start working tomorrow. The longer you are out of prison without a job, the more likely things are to go wrong.”

The government has commissioned an independent review into sentencing and is also launching a Women’s Justice Board to reduce the number of women in prison, something Lord Timpson feels strongly about.

The Clink shows how successful rehabilitation can be. In 2021 the charity launched a project to deliver training in up to 70 prisons for offenders to gain professional culinary qualifications. In the last two years, 60% of those participating in its projects secured long-term employment post their release from prison, with reoffending reduced by 32%.

But chief executive of The Clink Yvonne Thomas sounded the alarm over funding pressures and said while she welcomes the direction of the new Labour government she warned “we do need to see the cash following the intent”. She told the Mirror the number of people they train could drop from around 800 this year to around 400 next year if they don’t get extra funding.

“I'm worried about the fact that we and other charities who work in prisons are standing services down week by week," she said. “And those services will not be put back in because once we lose skilled people, you can't put them back easily. So at the moment rehabilitative capacity is being lost and I worry that it's going to take a very long time to rebuild it, if ever.”

Mia Wheeler, governor of Brixton prison, also told the Mirror that prison overcrowding had stopped people from accessing some rehabilitation programmes. She said “incredibly hard” pressures have forced them to prioritise what they can or can’t provide, while early releases have also made it difficult to make a plan for an offender.

Ms Wheeler said prison should be about “allowing an opportunity for change and people have been talking about second chances but sometimes the reality is that’s third, fourth, fifth chances”. “It’s really important that we fix some of the issues that are ultimately leading to people being in an unsettled release environment and employment is a critical part of that and it's fundamental to everything we’re doing,” she added.