If you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em

Crime reduction charity NACRO joins a bid to run prisons in Merseyside & London:

The charity’s chief executive, Paul Cavadino, said Nacro’s role in the consortium would be to oversee rehabilitation and resettlement services in the prisons. “The best way of ensuring they are being run properly is to be involved in planning this from the start,” he said.

“If you are involved in the planning of the regime, it makes it much more likely that a prison will be providing high-quality resettlement and rehabilitation. Prisoners would be therefore much better prepared for reform.”

It’s an interesting idea, and if they won the contract and could show some substantive results, it could become an example to the rest of the prison system that rehabilitation, when done right, remains the best long-term method for reducing crime.