Retailers such as Greggs, Iceland and frozen ready-meal firm Cook are to take a leading role in supporting offenders gain employment under a new government scheme launched today.
Employment councils will be set up comprising senior leaders from prominent firms that will support offenders serving their sentence in the community into work.
They will build on the work of prison employment advisory boards, which have brought local business leaders into prisons to improve education and prisoners’ ability to gain work when released. This scheme had already made “huge progress” according to minister for probation, prisons and reducing reoffending, Lord James Timpson, who today launched the new scheme at a Cook facility in Sittingbourne, Kent.
The new regional employment councils will expand this model and take in tens of thousands of offenders serving their sentences in the community and will involve probation officers, providing them with far more support to build relationships with local employers.
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Employment advisory boards will continue at 93 individual prisons but employment councils will help prison leavers look for work across an entire region, not just the immediate vicinity of the last prison they were in.
Each employment council will also have a representative from the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) to help improve links with local job centres.
The initiative was flagged up after Labour’s election win last July and featured among measures in the government’s election manifesto and is focused on improving reoffending. Data shows that about 80% of all crime is reoffending, but offenders who are employed six weeks after leaving prison have a reoffending rate of about half of those out of work.
Timpson said: “Getting former offenders into stable work is a sure way of cutting crime and making our streets safer. That’s why partnering with businesses to get more former offenders into work is a win-win.”
He added that in addition to more help from the Probation Service, further support from the Department for Work and Pensions would link offenders with work coaches at job centres who will provide mock interviews, CV advice and tips on training.
DWP Lords minister, Baroness Maeve Sherlock, said the initiative was a vital component in the government’s Plan for Change, “as we begin our task of fixing the fundamentals of the social security system and progress with wider work to reduce poverty”.
She said research from the Ministry of Justice showed that 90% of businesses that employed ex-offenders agreed that they were “good attenders, motivated and trustworthy”.
Rosie Brown, co-CEO of Cook, said businesses stood to gain “committed, loyal team members to help us build our business. Re-offending is reduced, and families, communities, and society as a whole wins”.
Julia Pyke, joint-managing director at under-construction nuclear power plant Sizewell C, which provides opportunities for ex-offenders and veterans, said the launch of employment councils was “a great initiative”. Sizewell C will support around 70,000 jobs across the UK.
She added: “We are determined to create a workforce which represents all parts of society. That includes veterans and – under the right conditions – ex-offenders.
“Ex-offenders often possess valuable skills and untapped potential, and with the right support and guidance, they can transition from a path of crime to one of stability and security.
“Integrating ex-offenders into the workforce carefully and thoughtfully offers significant benefits for UK businesses,” said Pyke.
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