This web site is the result of a three year investigation by two freelance journalists into the contracts private companies
hold with prisons for inmates to carry out work.
The Guardian has just published the first results of our research.
Prisoners will be able to earn "real wages" for doing "real work" in jail under radical new plans being drawn up by the Conservatives
and penal reformers.
The shadow justice minister, Edward Garnier, [note: now replaced by Alan Duncan] said the Tory party will encourage more
private companies and charities to offer work and training in jails if it wins the next election.
"I want to see prisoners doing real work, not mere time-filling, and I want to see them earning wages that will incentivise them into
seeing a connection between effort and reward," he said.
The announcement comes as Society Guardian reveals that inmates in UK jails are working for some of Britain's best-known brands
for as little as £4 a week.
Household names including Virgin Atlantic, Monarch Airlines, Speedy Hire, Travis Perkins and book publisher Macmillan are
benefiting from work carried out by prisoners in England and Wales. More than 100 smaller companies are using prison
labour to produce everything from holiday brochures, novelty name-tags and balloons to industrial mouldings and,
ironically, security chains. read more.
Background material to this story is available on this web site
Some companies use prison labour because it is a cheap and effective way to carry out menial tasks. Some believe they are
offering prisoners an alternative being locked up 23 hours a day even if the work itself isn’t very taxing. Others try to offer
training and make the work part of a rehabilitation process. The problem is that the prison service is loathe to release any
details about the contracts citing commercial confidentiality and the effect adverse publicity might have.
This web site gathers together the material we have discovered using Freedom of Information Act requests and other
sources. It also provides a guide to some of the literature about prison labour.
We’d welcome additions to, and comments on, the material here. We’d want to hear from any prisoners who have carried out
work for private companies. We’d like to report on what experts are writing about this issue. We think, above all, that secrecy
isn’t helpful and an open and honest debate is necessary.
Phil Chamberlain & Richard Cookson
freelance journalists
info@prisonlabour.org.uk
