“Because all of these things are linked. You are not going to get offenders doing courses or into work if they have got high-level dependency and addictions and methadone is highly, highly addictive.”

Mr Raab said he wanted to “create as many incentives as we can” to encourage offenders into drug recovery wings and was not “ruling anything out. I don’t think you could curtail their sentence but we want to create a virtuous circle of showing offenders how they can change their lives,” he added.

Privileges will include not only access to the gym, exercise and amenities such as TVs, pool tables and better kitchen facilities, but “almost certainly” the right to work. 

“Ford open prison has a marketing call centre which is a great entitlement. Prisoners are queueing up to get access to that,” he said.

He said he was “quite shocked” to find that getting offenders into jobs only accounted for 0.8 per cent in the weighting of performance indicators for governors and prisons, a fraction of other priorities such as security, safety and welfare.

System-wide reform

“I am going to ramp that up to 20 per cent. What you are going to see is a system-wide reform to make getting offenders into work one of the crucial priorities for every prison governor,” said Mr Raab.

“We are setting Key Performance Indicators for all our prisons and there will be league tables and goals. It’s for funding or progressing to earned autonomy, which means greater latitude for governors to decide their regime.

“I want this to be distilled down into the performance appraisals for prison staff both at senior level and wing level because this is mission critical.”

Mr Raab also announced a quadrupling in the number of employment advisory boards (EABs), which link local companies with jails, from 23 prisons to 91 by spring 2022.

He said there was a potential pool of recruits from prisons that could plug any post-Brexit skill shortages. “The point that Rosie Brown [chairman of Wandsworth prison’s EAB] is making is that it’s a fantastic Brexit opportunity to drive down re-offending by getting offenders into work,” he said.

Mr Raab has set a target of quadrupling the proportion of ex-offenders in work from 14 per cent six months after release to more than 50 per cent.

‘Prisoners often have a great initiative that has been misdirected’

By Charles Hymas, Home Affairs Editor

Rhys, a prisoner in Wandsworth jail in south London, has already spotted a business opportunity that will help him go straight when he is released.

The 30-year-old, who regrets being incarcerated as his baby daughter grows up, has come up with the concept of an app that will link offenders with jobs on the outside.

“When people are in prison, you set up a profile with all the qualifications and skills that you have got in prison. When you download the app, it then shows you what jobs are available in your area,” he says.

It is a digital extension of the job that he is already doing in Wandsworth jail, where he helps other offenders find work, by ensuring they know what is available and that they have all their IDs, qualifications and skills in a CV that will give them the best chance of being employed.

He gets paid £2.75p a day for the role, which is part of a new employment hub set up at Wandsworth prison to help achieve the target of Dominic Raab, the Justice Secretary, of taking the proportion of ex offenders in jobs six months after release from 14 per cent to more than 50 per cent.

Rhys’s motivation is two-fold. One is personal. “The last time I went to prison, I didn’t have a child. Now I have a daughter. My daughter was not walking when I came in. Now she is running and she is nearly two,” he says.

The second is about self-respect and one that he explains to Mr Raab, who is on a visit to Wandsworth to get an insight into how the prison and its inmates are trying to boost post-release employment prospects.

Asked by the Justice Secretary what motivates him, Rhys replies: “For me personally, it’s seeing that you can come from a place like this and make a success of yourself rather than going out and just getting the minimum wage.

“We have one person who started his own business here. He went and made something of himself.”

Wandsworth prison last year launched an employment advisory board (EAB) to help boost links between businesses and the prison, staff and its inmates.

Its chairman is Rosie Brown, the co-chief executive of Cook, a successful family business that she built up with her brothers into a chain of 90 branded shops selling “posh” food.

They were the first UK business of scale to join B Corporation, a network of socially and environmentally responsible businesses that now numbers more than 4,700 companies.

“As a part of that we asked, ‘How could our business put back into our community. One way we could have a beneficial impact was by employing prisoners because there were three large prisons in North Kent [where the company originated],” says Ms Brown.

She launched the EAB at Wandsworth with a “blank sheet of paper”.

Formidable challenge

Now they have a hub up and running with employment “reps” like Rhys on every wing of what is one of Britain’s biggest prisons with more than 1,300 inmates.

The challenge was formidable. Just 5.5 per cent of ex offenders were in work six weeks after leaving, although it is distorted because of the high number of foreign prisoners in the jail who are largely barred from employment.

In the time since the employment hub was launched last year, more than 30 of those who have been through it are in full time jobs. Indeed, Ms Brown notes that with job shortages following Brexit, there is a pool of potential recruits in Britain’s prisons.

For those who might be concerned about risks, she says it can be overcome through transparency. “The more one knows and more the person shares, the better,” she says. “Transparency is key to overcoming concerns about risks.”

Benefits of hiring ex-offenders

She acknowledges most companies have guidelines barring, for example, murderers, arsonists and sex offenders but she has a clear message on the benefits that come with hiring ex-offenders.

“In my experience, we have seen enormous loyalty from employing prisoner leavers at Cook. We have team members who are incredibly loyal to the company. That’s the main benefit,” she says.

“The guys committed to turn their lives around are incredible. Sometimes they have something to prove. That makes them really aspirational. You want that energy in a business.

“And sometimes people are in prison because they have great initiative and potentially it has just been misdirected.”

Jessica Mellor-Clark, of Lendlease, who leads their operation to help people such as ex-offenders into work and is part of Wandsworth’s EAB, agrees. 

“Construction is a hard sector to persevere in because a lot of it is hard physical work, you need to want to be there,” she says.

“So to have people that really want this for all sorts of personal reasons means you have got an employee who is aspirational and who is dedicated and an employee who repays the trust and faith you have had in them 100-fold.”

Mr Raab has described the ambition of getting half of the ex offenders into jobs after their release as “mission critical.” 

For Rhys, it is about seeing his daughter grow up and giving her a secure future by making a success of his work.