There are a series of assumptions behind the government’s interest in ‘earned release’.
Participating in education while in prison reduces reoffending on release. Encouraging people in prison to take part in education is therefore worthwhile. And the best way to encourage people in prison to participate in education is to offer early release in exchange.
These assumptions, the first backed by an extensive evidence base, form the basis of existing earned release schemes, whereby people in prison can reduce the length of their sentence by participating in purposeful activity, including education.
Why earned release?
This idea – often described as being inspired by reforms in Texas – was floated back in September, when it was reported that the Ministry of Justice was considering reforms to enable people in prison to earn points to reduce their time behind bars by taking part in workshops. Then in November, the call for evidence for the government’s landmark Independent Sentencing Review, chaired by David Gauke, asked about the role of incentivisation in sentence progression.
This issue was therefore the focus of Prisoners’ Education Trust’s submission to the review. In it, we set out our support in principle for the idea of enabling people in prison to earn reductions in their sentence by participating in education and training.
If implemented effectively, this approach could benefit participants by reducing the length of their sentence and ensuring that they have the skills and qualifications they need to access employment on release. It could also benefit the taxpayer by reducing the cost of imprisoning them and the costs of reoffending. And it could benefit the broader community by reducing crime and introducing more skilled people into the workforce.
Making earned release work in practice
However our support for this approach comes with three key conditions.
The first is that significantly increasing the capacity of prison education provision, and the breadth of what is on offer, would be an absolute prerequisite of introducing this approach. There is already insufficient capacity to meet existing demand and incentivising people to participate in education – and promising them early release if they do – and then not being able to accommodate the resultant surge in interest would be a recipe for disaster. This would inevitably require more funding, given that prison education is already chronically underfunded.
The second is that the scheme would need to be carefully designed to take into account the individual’s starting point and the subsequent distance travelled, not just whether they have achieved a specific qualification. Otherwise there would be a risk of disadvantaging people with lower levels of attainment prior to prison and those with learning difficulties and disabilities. Record keeping would need to improve to provide absolute clarity on what people had done. Common obstacles that people face when trying to complete courses – like being transferred – would also need to be removed so their effort is not wasted.
The third is that this scheme should supplement, not replace, existing mechanisms for automatic early release. The Justice Secretary has worryingly suggested that earned release could replace automatic release after half (or currently 40 per cent) of a prison sentence. This would be a mistake, and would risk leading to people serving longer sentences if they couldn’t – through no fault of their own – access education or other purposeful activity. There are echoes in this of the early days of IPP sentences, when people couldn’t access the programmes they needed to do in order to secure their release.
A reform that could make a difference
Introducing earned release might not, on its own, dramatically reduce the prison population, but it could have significant benefits. It would help to genuinely put education at the heart of the system, aligning incentives around enabling people to study and to learn.
Implementing it would be challenging, particularly given the current state of the prison system, and doing it properly would be essential. But evidence is clear that participation in education reduces reoffending. Rewarding that by shortening the amount of time spent in prison would be good for the individual and for the system as a whole. If we want a more effective justice system it is worth doing, and worth doing right.
