Learn more about Prison Service support systems below.
Prison Service
While public safety is paramount, everyone in prison has to be treated with fairness and humanity. As well as trying to reduce crime by promoting law abiding behaviour, the service aims to provide productive activities that will educate and rehabilitate prisoners so that, when they are released, they won't re-offend.
The Prison Service strives to make the prison experience constructive. They seek to reduce re-offending by encouraging prisoners to be better equipped for work, relate to others and live lives free from addiction.
Before and after release
While a prisoner is in prison they will be offered the chance to participate in education and training schemes aimed at helping them towards a useful and law-abiding life when they are released.
Education and training
Most prisoners have access to educational courses and training while in prison. The objective is to help them gain skills and qualifications that help them find employment when they are released.
These courses are run by the Offenders' Learning and Skills Unit, which works in partnership with the Department for Education and Skills and the Prison Service and has been operational since April 2001. In addition to this, assistance can be given with re-settlement into the community, including finding accommodation.
Resettlement is where prisoners and their families receive assistance and support from the Prison and Probation Services and voluntary agencies to help them prepare for life after prison. This includes advice about their entitlement to state benefits, training, education, work experience and preparation for release. The objective is to help prisoners return to normal life, get a job and home, and cope with life without re-offending.
Prisoners preparing for release
A prisoner may be asked to attend groups or courses to help them with any behaviour problems they may have, such as alcohol or drug abuse, gambling, financial pressures, depression, aggression or lack of temper control, or sexual matters.
Pre-release courses
These courses help prisoners deal with the problems they may face after being released. These include help with housing, employment, benefits, health, drugs, alcohol and family. The National Association for the Care and Resettlement of Offenders has a computer-based service (called EASI) that provides up-to-date information on housing, employment, training and education, benefits and money advice and counselling services.
Resettlement Prisons and units
These are designed to help prisoners, particularly those serving longer sentences, prepare for release. As part of the resettlement arrangements some prisoners are able to go out to training or work from the unit or prison and return when they have finished.
Community Work
Working for the local community is intended to give prisoners the chance to build self-confidence and at the same time develop a sense of social responsibility. The work can include local environment projects, work with the elderly or people with disabilities, sports activities and fund-raising.
Earned Community Visits
Some prisoners or young offenders may be eligible to apply for a community visit. Normally this will be on a monthly basis and they will stay with family or friends in the locality of the prison.
Preparation for Employment and Job Clubs
Some prisons run their own job clubs in which advice and assistance are available to prisoners on how to look for jobs, including how to prepare a CV and interview techniques.
Money and benefits
As prisoners get near their release date the they will be advised on these as well as whether they are eligible for a discharge grant that helps with accommodation.
Addiction Advice
Drug and alcohol problems
Many prisoners enter prison with a drug or alcohol problem. The Prison Service is committed to supporting the welfare of everyone in prison and provides advice and support for these prisoners to help them tackle their addictions. Support and treatment is normally offered by the prison healthcare staff who also work with outside agencies.
Drug services in prisons
Every prison has workers. stands for 'Counselling, Advice, Referral, Assessment and Throughcare'. Everyone coming into prison who is identified as having a drug problem is assessed, given advice about their misusing, and referred to the specific drug service they need.
Workers can also give basic information about drugs and their effects, and may offer some counselling and group work to prisoners who want to give up or cut down on their misusing. They can also refer a prisoner to a drug treatment rehabilitation programme.
Many prisons provide other services for drug misusers. All local prisons and remand centres offer a detoxification service for prisoners wanting to come off drugs. The sort of detoxification offered varies from prison to prison. Some prisons have specialist units. Others detox prisoners on the wing.
Treatment Programmes
More prisons are now offering treatment programmes (both rehabilitation programmes and therapeutic communities) for prisoners wanting to tackle their drug problem. The programmes offered vary widely.
Some are run entirely by outside drug workers, some by prison officers, and some by a mixture of both. Some last a few weeks, others up to 18 months. The prisoner will be expected to give up misusing while on the programme. Many programmes are run on Voluntary Testing Units, where prisoners are regularly tested for drugs.
National Probation Service
The National Probation Service works with offenders either because they have just been released from prison, or because they have received a community sentence, for example a Community Rehabilitation Order or a Drug Treatment and Testing Order.
Programmes like these force offenders to understand the consequence of their actions and help them to change their behaviour. They are often combined with measures to tackle issues like illiteracy, unemployment or homelessness that can contribute to re-offending.
When potentially dangerous offenders are due for release, the National Probation Service works with other agencies to manage and monitor the situation to ensure the safety of the public and the offender.The probation service also advises the courts on sentencing and re-offending risk, and keeps victims of serious crime informed about when offenders are due for release from prison.
Community Sentencing
Community sentences combine punishment with changing offenders' behaviour and making amends - sometimes directly to the victim of the crime. Community sentences are not a soft option.
They can include drug or alcohol treatment programmes which may be causing the offender to commit crime, compulsory (unpaid) work such as community projects or charity work, curfews during hours when the offender is most likely to commit crime, to list a few.
Voluntary sector involvement
A number of national and local voluntary agencies help to rehabilitate offenders. One of the largest of these is (the National Association for the Care and Resettlement of Offenders), which works with more than 25,000 people each year. provides housing for prisoners, helps them to find work and involves families and communities in efforts to cut crime.
Making amends
Every year, the courts order over 7 million hours worth of community punishment to be supervised by the National Probation Service. This enforced, unpaid work ranges from painting schools to landscaping public parks and cleaning graffiti. It both benefits the community and punishes the offender.
"Restorative justice" is another community sentencing option. This provides an opportunity for victims, offenders and, sometimes, representatives of the community to discuss an offence and how to repair the harm caused.
This can help offenders to understand the consequences of their actions and encourage them to make amends. Restorative justice can be a very powerful tool in reducing re-offending and giving victims a voice in the justice process.
Further infromation
