Margot James Visits Feltham Young Offenders Institute

The Feltham Young Offenders  Institute

Margot accompanied shadow prisons minister Cheryl Gillam on a visit to Feltham in December.  Three young people from Camden are at the institute currently.  It was clear from my visit that Feltham does provide an opportunity to turn your life around but only if you are motivated to seize it, that is the challenge.

I wanted to visit Feltham because I believe if we are going to advocate tough policies on law and order,  more prison spaces and an end to Labour’s early release scheme for example, we have a responsibility to ensure that our prisons give people a chance to reform their lives.  At the moment few do. New Labour talked a lot about the causes of crime as well as crime itself in the early years but Blair has now chased us so far to the right that the causes of crime have been left behind.

One cause of crime is the high rate of re-offending.  One of the UK’s largest companies, National Grid Transco, sponsors a programme in which prisoners with no qualifications receive training.  They leave prison with a job to go to and within six months they are fully productive engineers earning £18,000 and the rate of re-offending is just 7%.  National Grid say they have less trouble with the ex convicts than they do with their graduate trainees.

A re-offending rate of 7% is about ten times less than the average for young offenders.  I was pleased to see so many opportunities at Feltham.  Ford sponsor a huge mechanics workshop for prisoners to learn mechanical skills which when I visited the young men were applying to six cars in various states of dilapidation.  There was a painting and decorating workshop where inmates were doing an NVQ course in building and decorating.  I had the feeling that for many of these young men Feltham was making up for the very poor educational opportunities they had received earlier in their lives.

We need more emphasis on vocational skills training and less on getting 50% of young people to university where a good quarter of them end up with useless degrees which are superfluous to industry and society’s requirements.