Today the Social Market Foundation has published a blueprint which would bring private investment into the prison and rehabilitation service at a time when public spending is set for dramatic cuts.  The report, which proposes radical reforms to the system for prisoners who receive a sentence of a year or less, recommends:

 

    * that short term prisoners be held in entirely separate prisons from long term inmates;

 

    * that the offender management of those with short term sentences, both in prison and after release, be contracted out to private and third sector providers;

 

    * that the new providers will be paid by results, getting their full payment only if an offender has not been reconvicted within two years of their release.

 

The report proposes that there would be ten contracts, nine for each of the English regions and one for Wales.  Each region would deal with around 7,000 short term offenders per year.

At the launch event at 09.30 this morning Alan Duncan MP, Shadow Prisons Minister, will react to the report and give a statement about his party’s prisons policy.

 

The SMF argues that their approach will encourage providers to tailor effective interventions to individual offenders needs, provide new investment at a time of public spending cuts, and strengthen the focus on stopping the recidivism of those given short prison sentences - 58% of whom have ten-or-more convictions -  who currently get little or no support on their release.

The SMF argues that evidence suggests reoffending could be reduced by 20 percentage points, saving the Exchequer up to £1 billion per year - the savings coming from what would have had to be spent by the police, courts and prison services on catching, convicting and incarcerating a repeat offender.

Commenting on the proposals Ian Mulheirn, Director of the SMF and one of the report's authors, said:

"Tinkering with the current system cannot produce the change required in the decade of public spending cuts ahead: our solution offers a new way forward.

"It is a shocking fact that more than 7 out of every 10 offenders leaving British prisons, after a sentence of one year or less, are back behind bars within two years.  As offenders with these short prison terms comprise the vast majority of inmates going through our prisons each year, this means thousands of people being repeatedly admitted to prison at huge cost to the taxpayer.

"The failure of the prison and probation system to crack re-offending means that communities suffer the misery of crime, and the taxpayer has to meet the £60,000 cost incurred by the state each time an ex-prisoner returns to jail.

"Our model will benefit society as well as the public purse."