Jail will force its prisoners to work nine to five, to cut reoffending

INMATES at the new £120 million Low Moss prison will be made to work a 35-hour week, in a bid to stop them reoffending when they are eventually released.

It is the first time that a full-time working culture has been put at the heart of a Scottish prison.

All inmates will be made to leave their cells before 9am each morning, with electricity cut off in their absence, so they cannot stay behind and watch TV.

They will then take part in commercial projects, such as manufacturing, educational courses or programmes aimed at addressing their offending.

The electricity will even be turned off at 1am in the cells, to try and ensure prisoners get a decent night’s sleep ahead of their working day.

Low Moss, which is to open in March and will house up to 700 inmates, was the first prison to be built by the public sector on a brownfield site since the 1970s.

This gave the designers the flexibility to include worksites and a link centre which will include employment, housing, social work and addiction services.

It is not the first Scottish prison to encourage inmates to work up to seven hours a day, but it is the first to formalise it in this way.

A spokesman for the Scottish Prison Service said: “The big difference here is prisoners will be expected to work 35 hours every week.

“When they leave the halls in the morning, the staff will leave with them. Work will range from manufacturing to doing prison laundry, but there will also be education and reoffending programmes.

“Some of it will be commercial work, producing goods and materials that can be used elsewhere, or used within the prison estate. For example, the bed sheets for Low Moss were made at another prison.”

The prison service expects the running costs of Low Moss to be no higher than at a similar-sized institution, such as at Edinburgh, because the workshops and courses will be run by wardens who would be employed there anyway.

Reoffending rates fell to their lowest point in a decade last year, with 42.4 per cent being reconvicted within two years, and 31 per cent within one.

However, ministers are still concerned about the number of criminals who spend their lives going in and out of prison.

The Scottish Government introduced a presumption against sentences of three months or less last year, replacing them with community payback schemes, to stop low-level offenders graduating to more serious criminality under the guidance of fellow prison inmates. It is hoped the discipline of a nine-to-five working day will prepare those at Low Moss for work, on their release, instead of reoffending.

Justice secretary Kenny Mac-Askill said: “Our priority for any prison is to punish serious offenders and keep the public safe.

“I was pleased to see the progress that’s been made at HMP Low Moss which will certainly be a good example of how we should be managing prisoners in the 21st century.

“This new building, and the way it is designed, will allow prison management to impose tough new crackdowns on inmates, such as cutting the power to cells during the day and operating a nine-to-five working week.”

It is also hoped that Low Moss, in East Dunbartonshire, will ease the high levels of overcrowding across the prison estate.
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