Conservative Conference 2010: Prison work proposals unlikely to affect YOIs

Speaking at the Conservative Party conference in Birmingham, Justice Secretary Ken Clarke announced a major expansion of prison industries to get prisoners working, with revenue raised used to support victims' funds.

Clarke said the plan would help address re-offending by getting offenders used to working hard and the opportunity to learn a trade.

This will be done by making it easier for prison governors to bring private companies into jail to run businesses employing prisoners in jobs.

During the speech Ken Clarke did not refer to young offenders and Andrew Neilson, assistant director at the Howard League for Penal Reform, said the policy is unlikely to extend to young offender institutions.

"The group of prisoners who it is meaningful to engage in real work are those on long-term sentences which is not such an issue in the youth justice world."

Neilson added that the conference in general had been short on detail about the future of youth justice. "The future is still very unclear," he said.

"What is clear is they [the government] are not talking about youth justice as a discrete thing in the way the last government did.

"Either they don’t see it as a discrete thing or they are still working through proposals and are stuck on adult issues at the moment."

Clarke also outlined plans to improve drug addiction services in prisons and challenged the private sector, charities, voluntary bodies and public services to come up with schemes to cut re-offending rates.