🔗 Share this article

Decreases to educational programs within correctional institutions are impeding prisoners' employment and skill development opportunities, ultimately creating danger to community security, according to a latest report from a correctional oversight organization.

Cycle of Reoffending Connected to Lack of Training

Repeat criminals often create chaos in their neighborhoods due to the inability of prisons to provide adequate education and work opportunities that could help break the cycle of criminal behavior, the report noted.

“I have significant concerns about the effect of real-terms education funding reductions on already insufficient services and about the lack of genuine appetite and drive for progress that this represents.”

Budget Reductions Endanger Reform Initiatives

In spite of promises to enhance availability to learning, spending on direct educational services in prisons is being cut by as much as 50%, according to recent reports.

While the overall education allocation has remained unchanged, the expense of program contracts has soared, according to prison governors.

• Just 31% of former prisoners are working six months after release
• Ninety-four of 104 inspected facilities were rated “poor” or “not sufficiently good” for meaningful engagement
• Average attendance in training activities was just 67% in reviewed prisons

Insufficient Situations Impede Rehabilitation

Overcrowding, a lack of workshop facilities, equipment failures, and ageing infrastructure have compounded the problem, according to the analysis.

Numerous prisoners wait for weeks to be assigned an training spot and are often assigned any is open, rather than training relevant to their career opportunities upon release.

Even when work went ahead, full-day positions generally engaged prisoners for just a limited time per day, with numerous positions divided into part-time slots to extend limited resources further.

Official Response and Upcoming Initiatives

The prison system has a duty to protect the community by making inmates less inclined to reoffend when they are freed, but too often it is failing to fulfill this responsibility.

Top governors understand that prisons, and in the end our society, are more secure if inmates are meaningfully occupied, and that education, training and work play a vital role in motivating prisoners to reform.

“We know that meaningful engagement can help to facilitate secure and proper prisons and have a positive effect on recidivism levels.”

Until leaders in the correctional system take the provision of effective training and training more seriously, it is hard to see how appallingly high reoffending levels can be lowered.

Funding reductions are also expected to impede initiatives to introduce a new reward-driven prison regime that would allow inmates to gain time off their sentence by finishing employment, skill development and learning courses.