Episode 15 - Prison Education & Privatisation

Prison Education
Like half the women in prison the three Julies have no educational qualifications and are likely to find it difficult to get a job when they are released. A 1994 survey by the Basic Skills Agency found that three out of five prisoners (men and women) are excluded from 96% of jobs because their basic reading, writing and numeracy skills were not up to scratch. A study in Canada has shown that those who attended basic literacy and numeracy courses had a much lower rate of reoffending than those who had not. This is likely to be because they were more successful in finding and keeping jobs.

As a result of the Basic Skills Unit findings and the Canadian research there is now a far greater emphasis on education, and particularly education in basic skills, in prison than ever before. Opportunities to improve learning in basic skills is available to all people in prison. Many prisons also offer vocational courses leading NVQs in a range of skills including hairdressing, carpentry, welding, cleaning, electronics and tailoring.

Computer skills are also taught at all prisons, though prisoners do not generally get the chance to surf the net as Cassie and Roisin did to find Buki's son.

Unfortunately only Julie Saunders looks as though she will be sticking with the education - the others are going back to servery. Luckily their jobs were kept open for them thanks to Sylvia Hollamby's cynicism about any of them being able to cope with education.

Privatisation
The cloud on Neil Grayling's horizon (apart from his forthcoming marriage to Di Barker) is the prospect of Larkhall being privatized if standards don't improve in the next six months. Privately run prisons in the UK started in 1992 with the Wolds in Yorkshire, though private companies had been running prisons in the USA and Australia for some time before that. There is some opposition to private prisons - on the basis that no profit should be made from locking people up - but they have also helped to push reform forward. Companies wishing to bid for the management of a prison have to submit details of every aspect of the way the prison would be run by them, and a service Level Agreement is then drawn up to hold the contractor to this. Every privately run prison has a Controller (or Compliance Monitor) from the Prison Service whose job it is to make sure that the Service Level Agreement is being honoured. The Controller also conducts disciplinary adjudications on prisoners, rather than the privately employed prison Director. Fines are imposed on companies managing private prisons which have failed to comply with their Service Level Agreements. Fines imposed so far total more than £1million. No women's prisons are currently managed by private companies.