Colin Shute, founder of soft services provider SBFM, comments on the UK government’s proposed Employment Councils regime to bring probation, prisons and business leaders together as part of a drive to get thousands of offenders into stable jobs and away from a life of crime.

Sirs,

The launch of Employment Councils is a promising new scheme designed to help break the cycle of repeat offending. Prisons have been 99 per cent full across England and Wales, leading to early releases and putting immense pressure on the prison structure. This hugely hinders the government’s ability to provide catered support to offenders and guide them out of a cycle of reoffending.

Without support structures like these in place, many ex-offenders leave prison with nowhere to go, no job opportunities lined up, and face stigmatisation, which prevents them from applying for and securing new opportunities.

These factors hugely impact reoffending, further incapacitating our overcrowded prison infrastructure. James Timpson and the Timpson Group have tirelessly worked to change this reality for years, especially through the Employment Advisory Boards (EAB) that James helped establish with the Ministry of Justice.

I am proud to be a chair of the EAB, which helps ex-offenders develop through skills-based training to ease their transition out of incarceration.

Many prison leavers are eager to prove their abilities in the workplace and are an underappreciated potential workforce, which is where we come in. SBFM wants to give ex-offenders new, fulfilling career opportunities that help them rehabilitate into the workforce.

More businesses need to engage with their local communities and prisons to develop support structures for prison leavers. We hope that Employment Councils will bring these groups together to develop stable, much-needed pathways so more people can leave the prison system for good.

Colin Shute

SBFM