Sadiq Khan – 2014 Parliamentary Question to the Ministry of Justice

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Sadiq Khan on 2014-04-29.

To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, how many prisoners were employed in work in jails on 1 April in each of the last four years.

Jeremy Wright

Work in prisons is a key priority to ensure prisoners are engaged purposefully whilst they are in custody. It also gives them the opportunity to learn skills and a work ethic which can increase their chances of finding employment on release, a key element to reducing reoffending.

The number of prisoners working in industrial activity in public sector prisons increased from around 8,600 in 2010-11 (the first year for which figures are available) to around 9,700 in 2012-13. This delivered an increase in the total hours worked in industrial activities from 10.6 million hours to 13.1 million hours. Private sector prisons have also been supporting this agenda and have reported that they delivered over 1½ million prisoner working hours in commercial and industrial workshops in 2012-13 which provided work for over 1,200 prisoners.

In addition there are substantial numbers of prisoners who work to keep prisons running on tasks such as cooking, serving meals, maintenance and cleaning.

Figures for public sector prisons are published in the NOMS Annual Report Management Information Addendum: https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/225225/mi-addendum.pdf

Figures for the number of prisoners working in the community are not held centrally and could only be obtained from local records at disproportionate cost.

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