At the HM Prison Highpoint in rural Suffolk a group of inmates are busy fixing and assembling dummy train tracks in the rain.
Nearby, a room full of power plugs is set up ready for another set of prisoners to participate in an electrician course, while others are fixing broken IT equipment for the Ministry of Justice (MoJ) headquarters.
These are just a few of the training courses on offer for the prison’s 1,300 inmates, ranging from forklift truck driving to gardening, furniture painting and even traffic marshalling.
As Britain suffers a labour shortage, Rishi Sunak has spied an opportunity inside the UK’s packed jails. Hoping that ex-convicts could be part of a solution, the Prime Minister is urging big business to recruit prison leavers as part of a national campaign.
KPMG on Wednesday emerged as the first white-collar British company to work with the MoJ on employing ex-offenders.
With around one million vacancies in the UK job market, prisons and probation minister Ed Argar believes that prisoners could provide “businesses with the staff they need to boost the British economy”.
As one of the largest Category C prisons in the country, with former inmates including Boy George and Amy Winehouse’s ex-husband Blake Fielder-Civil, the focus at Highpoint is on training convicts whose escape risk is low.
Prisoners who refuse to take part in any training or education have some of their privileges, such as a TV and exercise time, taken away until they agree.
There will be growing pressure on large Category C prisons like this one to help tackle Britain’s worklessness crisis in the years ahead. The number of Britons classed as economically inactive, meaning they are neither in a job nor looking for one, has ballooned to 9.25 million post-pandemic.
