Reducing Re-Offending Through Skills And Employment

The public consultation on the 'Reducing Re-offending Through Skills and Employment' Green Paper generated a large and diverse response encompassing learning providers, employers and their representatives, criminal justice institutions and agencies, voluntary organisations and many others, as well as offenders themselves.

The great majority of respondents fully supported the premise that re-offending could be reduced by improving employability skills of offenders, and endorsed proposals for strengthening and extending existing arrangements for assessing, training and placing offenders into jobs.

Most prisoners have access to educational courses and training while in prison. The objective is to help and encouraged them to gain the skills and qualifications to enhance their chances of finding employment when they are released. Research has shown that prisoners who gain employment after release are much less likely to re-offend.

Courses are run by the Offenders' Learning and Skills Unit which was established in April 2001 to improve the quality and quantity of learning skills in prisons.

CMT Services are fully committed to supporting OLAS and strategies focused on reducing re-offending through improving the skills of offenders. We continue to work in very close partnership with employers and industries and will always strive to provide the highest-quality training programmes designed in collaboration with employer needs.

Frank Sealey
CMT Services
HMP Contracts Manager