Human rights campaigner Peter Tatchell has said that prisoners should work to contribute towards the cost of their incarceration and learn new skills.
Speaking on GB News, Peter Tatchell said: “We sort of already have [Texas-style reforms], because to get parole or to be released on licence, you have to have shown good behaviour. But I’d been all in favour of extending it.
“I’d even go further, though. I think all prisoners should be encouraged to work, to do productive labour, to produce economic wealth, and in return as doing that, they should also get remission in their sentences together with their good behaviour.
“I have been to HMP Grendon, which is a model present. It’s the gold standard of prisons in the UK. It is all about rehabilitation.
“The prisoners actually run their own sections themselves. They have weekly counselling and psychological sessions: murderers, child molesters, the worst of the worst. They run their own little unit.
“It’s all about self responsibility, teaching them to take charge of their own lives, their own future, and a positive outcome. Now the results are that at HMP Grendon, the reoffending rate is half the national average.
“ It’s a huge success story, and it shows that rehabilitation works. And I just think that every prison in this country, of course, people need to be punished, there needs to be deterrents, but we need to give people the chance of rehabilitation and to acquire the skills they need so that when they’re released, they can get jobs and be productive members of society.
“If [prisoners] just go into prison and come out as the unreformed characters they went in, society has no benefit. We lose.
“Rehabilitation works well in a small minority of prisons, but it’s a very tiny minority. I’ve dealt with prisoners who have been desperate to learn skills, even to learn English language if they’re foreign nationals, so they can be productive.
“They couldn’t get the classes that they wanted. If someone wants to get training and skills and they are not able to get it, like some of them are very poorly educated, and they want to get their A levels and GCSEs, they can’t.
“The system has to be that there’s proof with results, and it has to be not just ticking boxes and prisoners saying so.
“The other thing we have to remember is that about two thirds of all prisoners have mental, drug and alcohol problems, and unless we deal with those, they’re going to be in a cycle of prison, release, prison, release.
“Put them to work. Prisoners should help pay for the cost of their imprisonment, it shouldn’t be the taxpayer. That’s why I’m saying prisoners in prisons should do productive work. that earns money for Exchequer and they get a small share of it.
“And if they’re doing their job well, it also counts towards good behaviour for potential early release.”