Prisons: Education

Lord Marks of Henley-on-Thames Excerpts

Tuesday 19th January 2016 Lords Chamber

[Lord Marks of Henley-on-Thames (LD)]

My Lords, the strongest factors in keeping an offender from reoffending after release from prison are a job, a home and a family or a stable relationship. Finding a job helps with finding a home and maintaining stable relationships.

Education in prison can help offenders find employment. It is completely clear that many prisoners have very little formal education before going to prison, as my noble friend Lord Addington said. It equips them with skills but at the same time it improves self-esteem and self-discipline. So it is tragic that December’s Ofsted report painted such a bleak picture, with a marked decline in educational outcomes over a year and a rating of “inadequate” or “requires improvement” for 72% of prisons.

Dame Sally Coates’ review is therefore extremely welcome. I hope her report will be innovative and adventurous and that she will pay particular attention to diversity of educational opportunities, greater access to distance learning, development of IT skills and part-time release to pursue education where security allows. However, to improve prison education, the Government must find the resources to fund it and the Treasury presently puts far too little effort into evaluating savings later to justify extra spending now. Every offender who finds a job because of education in prison brings savings not only to the prison system but to future potential victims, to the criminal justice system, to social security and the social services, and to HMRC. Why will the Treasury make no realistic attempt to quantify these savings?

Before closing, perhaps I may make one brief point on the youth estate. We opposed the large 320-bed secure college at Glen Parva. We were right to do so and the present Secretary of State was right to scrap it, but the general aim—better education for children and young people in custody, who are now below 1,000 in number—was right. However, they need to be in institutions that are human in size, that meet the difficult health and social needs of troubled young people and that offer genuine and diverse education at a very personal level. Secure children’s homes do great work and young offender institutions can learn a lot from them about good educational experiences, albeit in the context of larger institutions. This may be expensive but my point about resources for adult prisoners is just as true, or perhaps even truer, for young people. Every £1 invested in helping a young offender avoid a life of crime earns for us all a generous return in financial and human savings.