Sentencing prisoners to work training would reduce prison overcrowding: Bird Lovegod

There’s also a demand that’s exceeding supply. The demand for prison cells. There’s no more room in prisons for actual prisoners. Clearly, and typically, our Government failed to get in front of this obvious and slow moving problem before it became a crisis.

But, putting that aside, and focussing only on a possible solution, might it be intelligent to sentence people to actual work? Or more in keeping with the reality that most of these people are completely unskilled and unemployable, actual work training. What if offenders were sentenced to 100 hours of bricklaying training? Or 200 hours of plastering training? Or 300 hours of painting and decorating training? Heck, they could even build new prisons!

Ok, seriously, what if that was implemented? How would it work? I’d suggest the trainee should be tagged, as part of the punishment and ability to monitor their whereabouts. They should have to attend a training center daily and be specifically trained in one of a selection of skills. After the 100 hours training, they would be given a certificate of competency and lined up with job interviews.

Let’s say they screw up and reoffend. Maybe they still smoke weed and get caught in possession again. Ok, another 100 hours, this time in plasterboarding. Reoffend? Another 200 hours, this time in carpentry. And so on. Sooner or later they are going to grow up and see they’re a serious asset in the jobs market. They’re not a social reject, they’re a skilled candidate for a selection of well paid work.

This would surely be better than locking them in a cell, even if there were spaces available? Require them to train and become employable. Give them the opportunity to learn a trade then earn from it.

Allow them to choose the trade they want to be trained in, and require them to do it. Obviously serious crimes need prison time, and perhaps part of the release process could include mandatory training in nationally required skills. It wouldn’t take long before they realised they could earn £700 a week and live a good and useful life. Some of them could be employed in more training centers. As it stands, we lock them up, semi literate, unskilled, totally unemployable, and release them, semi literate, unskilled, totally unemployable. And they do the only thing they know how to do. And get banged up again.

If mandatory tagged training was implemented it would break the cycle of crime and punishment and replace it with skills and employability. The social benefits of this would be immense. They could even be trained by fixing up council housing properties. Enforced training should replace ‘community service’ which is clearly not working, nor is it work, nor does it provide any meaningful training, skill development, or certification. It’s too late for the current government to implement something this effective or sensible, but perhaps another party might.

Bird Lovegod is an entrepreneur and Christian commentator