Plans to allow prisoners to work 40-hour week are 'impractical'

Prison officers warn of insufficient staff numbers to oversee justice secretary's proposals for improving inmate rehabilitation

Owen Bowcott, legal affairs correspondent
guardian.co.uk, Tuesday 12 July 2011

Plans to enable prisoners to work 40 hours a week inside jail are impractical because there is insufficient staff levels to oversee them, prison officers have warned the government.

Steve Gillan, general secretary of the Prison Officers Association, told MPs the proposals for improving rehabilitation have not been allocated adequate resources.

Giving evidence at the committee stage of the legal aid, sentencing and punishment of offenders bill, Gillan said: "We are broadly supportive of prisoners working but it has got to be meaningful. You have to look at the situation where companies may be laying people off outside and setting up workshops in prison."

In one jail holding 1,000 inmates, there were workshop places for only 30 prisoners at a time, Gillan explained. "We were very surprised when Ken Clarke [the justice secretary] announced that it would be 40 hours a week. There's not the space or resources. Prison officers only work a 39-hour week. We believe, and there's evidence to show, that the prison population will not fall as fast as envisaged and there's still a £130m hole in the Ministry of Justice's budget."

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