England: Gove to oversee radical devolution of powers to prisons

The Justice Secretary, Michael Gove is to enact radical changes in the penal system by transferring more power from Whitehall to prisons themselves.

Speaking to The Times, Mr Gove said he will give governors powers over education, budgets and prisoner perks.

In his first four months on the job he has focused on prison reform, visiting Belmarsh and other prisons. He has decried the absence of “purposeful” activity among inmates and models the new system on academy schools, which give more power to head teachers.

He also revealed he would like to extend the scheme which sees inmates allowed out of prison on license before their release proper and has established a new “Criminal Justice Board” to speed up cases after finding out the average rape case took over 600 days.

A report by the chief inspector of prisons for England and Walesdescribed many of England and Wales’ 126 prisons as “places of violence, squalor and idleness”.

Mr Gove said: “We are responsible for these people. We can determine what they do, who they see, what happens to them 24 hours a day and we don’t devote nearly enough time to educating them, to making sure that when they are being educated that they are getting the proper qualifications and providing them with the skills that they need in order to succeed in the world of work.

“One of the things I think is central to this job is making sure that people are less likely to commit crime after they leave prison.”

The basis of “reform prisons” is to give governors more control over prisons and greater freedom from Whitehall Mr Gove said.

“If you are a head teacher or an NHS manager, you have considerable freedom. The whole thrust of public service reform has been about giving more power to people at the front line and then holding them accountable for outcomes.

“The prison system is behind the curve. A great deal of what a prison governor does is constrained by very tight central regulation.”

He added more businesses should be involved in prisons – training inmates for jobs, saying: “We should definitely have more businesses going into prisons — you could have businesses running in prisons.

“Timpson in some cases train in prisons, in another prison I visited they have a call centre. Some are conducting market research or answering queries.”

However, he also cautioned that the right balance between retaining power and devolving it to prisons must be struck, saying: “We have to get the balance right, in the same way that in an NHS hospital you have Nice guidelines and national pay structures, so in a prison there will always be certain principles in the way in which you pay and reward people and in the security requirements. If the worst comes to the worst and something desperately bad happens — like a prison riot — there must be a national response.”

An announcement on the reforms is expected in the coming weeks.