Lets Go Round the Circle Again

I guess it goes without saying that most of us who've been around some time get mightily fed up when the wheel seems to be continually re-invented and some very old tried and tested ideas are trumpeted as new and innovative. Who'd ever have thought that providing training for employment within prison would reduce reoffending rates? 

Here we have the CEO at City & Guilds getting a little excited at such a prospect, seemingly forgetting or choosing not to remember that much of what he proposes was very effectively dismantled only a few years ago due to the staffing cuts introduced under Chris Grayling's prison watch. You can't get prisoners gainfully involved in training if there isn't the staff to unlock and supervise them, can you? 

Passionate about Reducing Reoffending

Passionate might be an overused word, but it is simply the best way to articulate how I feel about giving ex-offenders the opportunity to turn their lives around. As something so close to me personally and to the City & Guilds Group, I was immensely proud to see data from the Ministry of Justice showing the impact City & Guilds qualifications have on reducing reoffending.

Paid employment can reduce the likelihood of re-offending by as much as 50% and two-thirds of prison leavers identify it as one of the key factors in preventing re-offending. However, currently just 27% of people leaving prison enter paid employment on their release.

We’ve worked with the MoJ to help address this major challenge for a long time, delivering qualifications in Maths, English, Hospitality, Catering and Construction to help prisoners gain skills that make them genuinely employable.

The latest MoJ research found that those who had registered for City & Guilds qualifications were less likely to reoffend, committed fewer re-offences, and took longer to re-offend than those who had not. This underscores our fundamental belief that learning gives people the power to make positive change, and we’re more motivated than ever to bring learning to more people so they can change for the better.

Qualifications are only part of the story. Yes, we want to educate people in skills to perform in-demand jobs (and that help fill some of the most critical skills gaps in organisations and our economy) and we work closely with probation officers to get people into work. But we also need to make a focused effort to keep offenders out of prison, giving them a pathway to further education and training that will help them move forward in their careers and lives. Investing in the communities and infrastructure that support offenders is therefore vital.

A few years ago City & Guilds Group set up a £5m investment fund, to support individuals who are at a disadvantage or hard to reach to develop the skills they need to get into a job, progress on a job, and onto the next job. One of the key areas we focused on is findings skills interventions that help prevent offending and reoffending, hence our work with St Giles Trust - a London-based charity helping severely disadvantaged people to find jobs and homes.

The St Giles ‘Employability Skills for Peer Advisors’ programme gives ex-offenders an easier and more rewarding route into employment. Former offenders are trained to an NVQ Level 3 Advice and Guidance qualification and offer peer support (everything from motivational skills alongside help with CVs, applications and job searches) to help other ex-offenders into employment. As ex-offenders themselves, the team have a direct insight into the barriers people face when looking for a job with a criminal conviction.

Independent research from Cranfield University, based on Home Office data, revealed that in the last year it trained and qualified 63 peer advisors, who went on to work with 105 ex-offenders. As a result, ex-offenders were shown to be three times more likely to be employed and thus less likely to re-offend. The estimated saving to the public purse as a result of these people having been reached through the programme is £6.5m over three years. We are hugely pleased to see that the programme has had such a substantial impact But there’s so much more we can do.

When I meet with the prisons minister next week we’ll be talking through the possibilities of creating programmes of activity that reach the wider prison population. With peer advice projects of the kind modelled by St Giles Trust there is a significant opportunity to scale this project and see two-fold benefits: giving ex-offenders meaningful employment as peer coaches, and developing the behaviours in offenders that will help them into long-term employment.

Coupled together, the MoJ results and Cranfield study make a compelling case for taking a multi-faceted approach to upskilling and employing offenders and ex-offenders. We need to look at the pathways into and out of prison, and identify the moments where an intervention is critical. This may be in prison through formal training, it may be on release through supportive advisory projects - it may be in later years through informal networks. Through an aligned, clear position about what we expect of prisoners and prisons, and getting processes in place that help each progress, we can create an environment that delivers nothing but value to individuals, businesses, and the economy as a whole.

We’re proud to support ex-offenders, and we’re proud to have banned the box earlier this year to help open up job opportunities for ex-offenders in the Group. But it has to be a collective effort. I have a vision where we can give all offenders the chance to learn and work, and become a valued member of our society.

Chris Jones

Group CEO City & Guilds Group & Chairman