Last week, I was in Northamptonshire to open HMP Five Wells – a new, Category C ‘smart’ prison.
The prison, which is the first jail to be designed with education, training, and jobs for prisoners on release as its main purposes, will help reduce reoffending by ensuring offenders gain the skills and qualifications needed to find stable, long-term work upon release.
Evidence shows that prisoners who go on to find sustainable work within six months of leaving prison are up to nine percentage points less likely to reoffend than those who don’t. HMP Five Wells contains 24 workshops and a large number of classrooms, giving prisoners access to courses, qualifications and on-the-job training in areas including coding, car maintenance, plumbing and engineering.
As I wrote in The Times on Friday, the prison will also help offenders with drug or alcohol addictions to clean up their act, with two special drug recovery wings and the capacity to help up to 200 offenders with substance misuse issues to get off drugs and into permanent recovery.
HMP Five Wells will hold around 1,700 offenders when at full capacity in December and will boost local employment with over 600 new jobs for the community. The prison forms part of our commitment to create 20,000 modern, innovative prison places by the mid-2020s.
Read the full announcement here.
