23 October 2019
Solving the Skills Shortage…
And ending recidivism.
By Frank O’Nomics
According to a recent Open University Report, 63% of UK organisations are experiencing a skills shortage, and the situation is getting worse. The estimated cost of this shortage is an eye-watering £4.4bn and, while this figure is lower than last year due to the reduced use of temporary staff, further improvements are not expected –particularly post-Brexit. Of those costs £1.1bn was spent training staff hired at a lower level than intended. Consider this data in light of a recent report that concluded that young people leaving prison were “set up to fail” by not being prepared for a life back in society. It does not take a genius to work out the dual opportunity. Fortunately, there are organisations that are trying to do something about it.
The UK prison population currently stands at around 92,000. This is approximately twice the level of 1990 and, with a reoffending rate of around 40%, it is not easy to see how this is going to change in the near-term. The cost to the UK taxpayer of housing offenders is around £26,000 per prisoner in England and Wales, £35,000 in Scotland and £55,000 in Northern Ireland. If it is costing £2.5bn to just house the prison population, and re-offending is estimated to cost the economy £15bn per year, there is a considerable amount of money to be saved if the rate of re-offending can be reduced. Evidence suggests that giving skills training to prisoners, and (just as important) helping them to find a job to go to on release, has a significant impact on re-offending rates. A recent study tracked 50 young offenders after their release, none of whom had attended programmes set up to prepare them for it; there was a distinct lack of support for them once they were on the outside. Ministry of Justice data shows that only 17% of prison leavers are in full time work one year after release.
Despite the bleak picture, there are initiatives that are helping in at least some areas. I have written in these columns before about the work of The Clink, a charity that trains prisoners to work in the catering industry, and they are continuing to make progress. Not only do they train prisoners towards City and Guilds qualifications, they give them experience working in the Clink restaurants within prisons, helping them to find work and (crucially) accommodation on release. The charity grows much of its produce in the prison gardens and has set up an outside catering arm that caters for a number of the City Guilds. Those entering into the programme are almost 50% less likely to reoffend.
The catering industry is a major employer in the UK and suffers from skills shortage as much as any other. One area that is even more prone to chronic skill shortages is the building and decorating industry. This is being addressed by the charity Bounce Back, which helps ex-offenders into jobs in construction. Not only do they train prisoners within prisons, partnering with construction companies who will give them employment, they also run a social enterprise employing ex-offenders that bids for painting and decorating projects. So far they have supported almost 2,000 people with training and currently run a team of 30 qualified decorators in the social enterprise.
There is support for these initiatives from both the government and corporate sectors. The government supposedly considers social value in awarding public sector contracts and councils can give planning permission conditional on developers offering work to those who would otherwise struggle to find employment. On the corporate side a number of large employers, such as Multiplex and Costain, have developed programmes to employ ex-offenders. Timpson’s, the key cutting company, goes beyond looking for trained ex-offenders, being prepared offer training and give employment even to those released on temporary license. Currently 10% of Timpson’s employees are ex-offenders.
Despite the enlightened approach of these companies, and the work of a number of charities, there is still a long way to go. 6 out of 10 employers automatically exclude those with a criminal record, and charities can only do so much to offer training – the government needs to work with such organisations to develop a greater number of initiatives like The Clink and Bounce Back.
Bounce Back estimate that every person they train and put into employment can save the taxpayer up to £70,000. This is a key statistic in a week when then government scrapped plans to demolish our antiquated and squalid Victorian prisons. The argument that an increase in police numbers and tougher sentencing means that we cannot afford to reduce our facility to incarcerate starts at the wrong end of the problem. Greater efforts to make offenders employable and to find then jobs on leaving prison will reduce rates of re-offending and the size of the prison population, thereby allowing us to bulldoze the likes of Pentonville and use the site to build more affordable housing. Not just win-win, but win-win-win.
