Matthew Offord – 2016 Parliamentary Question to the Ministry of Justice

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Matthew Offord on 2016-02-10.

To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, what his Department’s policy is on increasing the autonomy of prison governors to make decisions about the day-to-day running of their prisons.

Andrew Selous

We intend to put the tools to drive improvements in how prisons are run in the hands of those at the frontline who know best what works. As the Prime Minister announced on 8 February, we will create 6 new reform prisons to spearhead this, with further change to follow.

Reform prisons will give Prison Governors the freedom to find better ways of rehabilitating offenders. Reform prisons will have one resource budget and discretion over how they spend it, rather than the current system which means Governors cannot transfer money between different budgets. They will be able to opt out of national contracts and services and choose their own suppliers such as education providers – who they can then hold to account for the quality of the service provided. They will also have much more freedom to tailor their own regimes – for example, deciding on additional visits to support family ties, or the amount of time spend ‘out of cell’ doing purposeful activity.