Innovative technology and prison work schemes can make us all safer

This week, I visited HMP High Down – on my first prison visit as Justice Secretary – to see two initiatives that hold the key to delivering game-changing improvements for offenders – to cut re-offending, and protect the public.

First, at High Down under their brilliant Governor Jo Simms, they are deploying the latest cutting-edge technology to provide an extra layer of protection against a new generation of threats. X-ray body scanners are being used to stop drugs, weapons and mobile phones from entering the prison. Since it was installed in October last year, the scanner has stopped 100 smuggling attempts.

Like 72 other closed male prisons across England and Wales, HMP High Down has benefited from this Government’s £100million investment in prison security measures. The results have been dramatic. In little more than a year, the new scanners across the prison estate have scuppered 10,000 attempts to bring mobile phones, drugs, batteries, and weapons into our jails.

This is not the only game-changing innovation we are rolling out. At the prison gate, metal detecting arches and wands provide a first line of defence, while highly trained dogs sniff out the evolving new drugs that infect our prisons. We are deploying phone-blocking technology. And, once offenders are released, we can monitor their location with GPS.

The deployment of technology is making our prisons a safer and more stable environment, so that prison officers can spend more of their time doing vital rehabilitative work – and that is the second critical insight that HMP High Down has to offer.

At High Down, they were well ahead of the Government in developing their headline vision as “Build Back Better” – which adorns signposts across the site. A key ingredient is work. I visited their marketing call centre – run by Census Data – which gives offenders the skills, work experience and pay packet to turn their lives around, and hires offenders on release.

I spoke to inmates who explained how much they enjoyed the opportunity to get into a more normal routine, in a workplace environment, to earn some money. I heard a moving story about how one offender spent his first pay packet on school shoes for his children. So work in prison can change the whole outlook of an offender, by giving them hope and something to lose – if they mess up again. The evidence shows that ex-offenders in work are far less likely to reoffend – so it is crucial for protecting the public.

That is why I am putting skills and work at the heart of our reform agenda across the prison system. Next week, I will host an employers summit, to work with businesses – including those experiencing staff shortages – on how we can expand work schemes for offenders.

This Government is recruiting 20,000 more police officers and building 18,000 more prison places, because we believe in robust law enforcement and tough punishments. But, we are also using innovation and business to develop a smarter approach to our criminal justice system, because that is the most sustainable way to reduce reoffending and make our neighbourhoods safer.