Sending prisoners overseas won’t help UK re-offending rates
Crime rates had spiralled. Prisons were overwhelmed. We were using old ships in the harbour to house the people we couldn’t fit onshore. Eventually, we decided to simply send them to another country altogether. Sound familiar? No, this wasn’t Alex Chalk’s plans for prison reform, instead it was 1786 and Prime Minister William Pitt (the Younger) made the call to ship our unwanted convicts to Botany Bay in Australia and establish a penal colony.
It would be farcical to suggest the Justice Secretary’s plans to deport British prisoners, who are citizens of another country, is close to the scale of the program in Australia in the 18th Century, but does try to tackle the same problem: a penal system bursting at the seams.
Last week, the government was forced to acknowledge that a change to sentencing rules for our most serious offenders who stay behind bars also means we simply do not have the capacity. No one is arguing we should set these people free.
But the answer is not to simply let someone else deal with it. Imagine, for example, those countries we deported prisoners to chose to do the same. If Estonia tracked down anyone in their prison with a British passport and gave them a one-way ticket to Wandsworth (via Heathrow).
The most serious offenders should stay in prison, but the problem with our overburdened jails is a different one.
Re-offending rates are so high, our prisons must accommodate a kind of turnstile justice. Poverty and unemployment is one of the main drivers of crime, with only around 17 per cent of ex-criminals able to find a job.
There are some excellent exceptions to this rule. Timpson, for example, is famous for hiring ex-offenders, with around 10 per cent of its workforce made up of people who were once in prison.
Bakery chain Greggs has also supported the Good Jobs Project, which aims to get ex-offenders into work.
Given that Britain is continuing to face mass labour shortages, with over a million vacancies meaning our labour market is still incredibly short of staff, we can hardly afford to ignore the number of people who have wound up in prison, often for relatively minor offences, and who are now excluded, it seems, from a chance of economic redemption.