'Rehabilitation revolution' planned
Justice Secretary Chris Grayling said he planned to use his experience in setting up the Work Programme in tackling the problem of reoffending
Chris Grayling will champion the use of payment by results across the public and private sector as part of a "rehabilitation revolution", he told Tory activists.
The Justice Secretary said he planned to use his experience in setting up the Work Programme, where firms and charities who helped get the unemployed into jobs were rewarded according to their success, in tackling the problem of reoffending.
In a fringe event at the Conservative Party conference, Mr Grayling also set out his opposition to a return to capital punishment. He told the event, organised by the Prison Reform Trust and National Grid, he was "particularly keen" to get the Justice Secretary role when Ken Clarke was moved in David Cameron's reshuffle.
Mr Grayling said: "The piece I do not think we have got right in this country yet is the rehabilitation revolution."
He said: "Where we fail is the reoffending statistics that say if people go to prison they are very likely to come back again. That really should not happen, so I think it requires very careful thinking, it requires us to bring to bear all the skills that exist."
Those skills could be in companies such as National Grid, which runs a scheme to recruit prisoners into jobs, or in charities, Mr Grayling said. He added: "That really is what the rehabilitation revolution is all about, it's about putting ourselves into the position where we can send the right people into prison but they don't keep coming back.
"I have not yet decided how finally we are going to do this, but the principle I want to bring to bear to the rehabilitation of offenders is the one that was at the heart of the Work Programme."
He said that showed "the best way government gets the best out of organisations - private, voluntary, whatever - is to actually pay them based on the success they have in turning lives around".
"That way people chase innovation, they chase good ideas," he said. "There's no question of just being paid for bums on seats, it's all about trying to achieve excellence. That will be my mantra. Though I haven't decided finally what shape that should take, who should be involved, how we should introduce it, where the line should be drawn between public and private."
Asked why the Government was not considering a return to capital punishment as a way of showing it was tough on crime, the Justice Secretary said: "I have never supported capital punishment for one simple reason: it is irreversible. The truth is that the history of this country is full of stories of miscarriages of justice, where people have been found many years after the event not to be guilty."
