§ Phil HopeTo ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department how many prisons have work training and job kiosks; and what plans he has to extend these initiatives across the prison estate. [9143]
§ Beverley HughesPrisons provide prisoners with information from the Employment Service (ES) job-bank, by contacting ES Direct or by hard copies of vacancies sent/brought to prisons by ES staff working directly with the Prison Service. Information from the job-bank is obtained from the internet by Prison Service staff.
We are considering piloting a number of stand-alone job point kiosks in selected prisons which prisoners can use to access this information directly. We are also considering piloting the ES work train databases within some prisons which have well developed job clubs or pre-release programmes run by prison staff or a voluntary sector partner (with a phone line to ES Direct). If the results look promising, we will consider a wider roll-out across the prison estate.