Offenders: Employment

(asked on 5th June 2018) - View Source

Question to the Ministry of Justice:

To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, with reference to the commitment to recruit ex-prisoners directly into the civil service on page 8 of his Department's Education and Employment Strategy 2018, Cm 9621, published in May 2018, what steps the Government plans to take to deliver that commitment.


Answered by
 Portrait
Rory Stewart
This question was answered on 11th June 2018

Reoffending is costing society approximately £15 billion a year. Effective rehabilitation needs prisoners to be willing to commit to change, take advice, learn new skills and take opportunities to work – both during their sentence and after. For those individuals willing to engage, the prison system must deliver.

That is why we have launched the Education and Employment strategy. The strategy will create a system in which each prisoner is set on a path to employment, with prison education and work geared towards employment on release from the outset.

In line with the Education and Employment strategy, we are leading by example to remove barriers to recruitment by employing ex-offenders into Civil Service roles across Government through our ‘Going Forward into Employment’ initiative.

The initiative was launched in the North West and is delivered by Civil Service Local in collaboration with HMPPS. It will be rolled out to other regions throughout 2018. Candidates are being selected from the community and the three pilot prisons- HMP Styal, HMP Thorncross and HMP Kirkham.

Once the first phase of the pilot is complete we will evaluate the project, consider lessons learned and review targets for the next phase.

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