Liz Truss to cut reoffending under major reforms to jails and courts

Prisons will need to prove they are reforming their inmates and preventing them committing further crimes under new laws unveiled on Thursday.

Liz Truss, the Justice Secretary, will change the definition of prisons for the first time designating them as places for "reform and rehabilitation", rather than simply housing prisoners.

The reforms are a significant shift away from the "prison works" approach traditionally associated with the Conservative party.

Prison governors will be given more powers to commission education and training opportunities with leading employers, in order to help prisoners get jobs on the outside.

But critics say Britain's overcrowded and understaffed prison system is in crisis, and have called on Miss Truss to cut sentences or inject more funding to tackle a rising tide of drugs and violence.

Miss Truss said: "Prison is about punishing people who have committed heinous crimes, but it should be a place where offenders are given the opportunity to turn their lives around."

The rate of re-offending among adults leaving prison is 45%, and re-offending costs the taxpayer around £15bn.

Prisons will receive more rigorous inspections from a new inspectorate; and league tables will identify those failing to deliver.

The Prisons and Courts Bill also includes reforms to the courts with hearings such as bail cases to be heard by video link; while victims of domestic violence will not have to see their attackers in court.

People charged with minor offences carrying a fine, such as travelling on a train without a ticket, will be allowed to plead guilty and pay their fine online.

Sky News visited HMP Onley in Warwickshire and spoke to 30-year-old Mohammed Ahmed who is working full-time at the Lock Inn, a restaurant and cafe for prison officers, staffed by inmates.

He will be released in April, from a seven-year sentence for a drugs offence, and is already applying for jobs in professional kitchens.

"I'm hoping there will be a job waiting for me. I've learnt some new skills in hospitality and catering so it gives me wider options of jobs.

"I'm eager to get out, get working. I made a mistake once, I won't do it again."

Romaine Angol, 27, is also working in the kitchen. He left another prison without getting any training and went on to commit a drugs offence.

"Here we have a lot of opportunities. If you cage us up like animals, the only thing for us to do is behave like animals. I will prepare myself for minimum wage to survive outside without doing crime."

The prison also has a Halfords workshop, where prisoners complete a full-time course to become bike mechanics with a guaranteed job at one of the company's stores on release, if they complete an induction.

The company has hired 34 ex-offenders.

Mark Vernege, 49, has been in prison before, and has been doing the course for the past two years.

"It's a big weight off my shoulders, that I don't have the anxiety of looking around for a job and having all the knock-backs from employers", he said.

"Housing and employment are the two key things for offenders, we can build from that."

Miss Truss has stood firm against calls including from her predecessors Ken Clarke and Michael Gove to cut the prison population and give people shorter sentences.

She says people who have committed serious crimes should be behind bars, and that since the 1990s it is welcome that more people are being jailed for sex offences and child abuse.

But funding cuts have seen the number of prison officers slashed by around 6,000 since 2010, although the Government is trying to hire another 2,500 with the offer of a pay rise.

In the past few months, major riots have broken out at four prisons. Even at Onley, there are problems with drugs and violence, and the prison was declared unsafe at its last inspection.

Labour's shadow justice secretary Richard Burgon said: "Prisons must reform offenders, but these proposals are an inadequate response to a serious situation."

HMP Onley is a category C prison with 700 inmates serving four years or less. Waiting lists for the courses - which also include bricklaying and digital printing - are long.

Acting deputy governor Kerry Dixon hopes the new freedoms will allow her to expand the work schemes with private companies - without having to use government-approved contractors.

She said the scheme offers the prisoners "an alternative to going back to the lifestyle that there was before".

The new laws will also give mobile network operators the power to detect unlawful mobile phones, and allow prisons to test inmates for new types of psychoactive drugs as they emerge.

George McBride, a former barrister turned drug policy expert at the Volteface think-tank, said: "In unsafe prisons the chances are higher that they will be involved in crime while they are in there, that they may build up drug debts to very dangerous people. That drives reoffending rates."