Prisoners `must pay cash to victims'

THE MASTER of the Rolls, Lord Woolf, has called on the Government to allow prisoners to earn extra money from their work in jail so that they can pay compensation to their victims. Lord Woolf said the idea should be introduced as part of a wider policy of ensuring that punishments meted out to offenders should benefit the communities that had suffered from their crimes.

Prisoners currently earn token wages of about pounds 7 a week, from which they buy toiletries and occasional luxury items from the prison shop.

Lord Woolf told The Independent: "It would be very useful if prisoners were able to earn more and use some of their earnings to pay back those who have been injured as a result of their actions."

The Master of the Rolls first recommended such a policy in his 1991 report into the riots at Strangeways prison in Manchester. A basic framework was put in place by the former MP Hartley Booth's private member's Bill, which became law in 1996. This allowed prisoners to make payments from wages for their own board and lodging, the upkeep of their family, private savings and reparation for their victims. But prisoners have not been able to take up the idea because realistic wages have never been introduced.

Ann Widdecombe, shadow Home Secretary, supported the plan, but said prisoners needed to earn about pounds 35 a week, paid for by Prison Service contracts with private companies. "It is all very well producing 2.8 million socks in three years. But because they are all for internal consumption, the wages are paid by the taxpayer. The Prison Service needs far more outside contracts."

A Prison Service spokesman said last night that the reparation arrangements could be introduced next year for the small number of prisoners who are currently receiving "enhanced earnings".

Lord Woolf was speaking as a patron of the new Payback programme, which will be launched next month from the Saatchi and Saatchi building in central London, with the aim of allowing victims and their communities to benefit from criminal punishments. In particular, the organisation would like to see a greater use of community punishments.

Lord Woolf said: "If somebody has broken into a house and stolen things, then to do some work in the victim's locality or to his property ... would be a very good way of paying back."

Lord Woolf said there were too many people in prison spending their time doing nothing for the communities they had offended against. He said: "We are recognising that locking up people for longer and longer and in greater numbers does not necessarily produce the results we all want to see."

Among Payback's other patrons are the actress Prunella Scales, the trade union leader Bill Morris and Sir David Ramsbotham, the Chief Inspector of Prisons.

Ms Scales said that visits to her local prison in Wandsworth, south London, had convinced her that too many people were in jail. She said: "It's disgraceful that people should be banged up and forgotten about instead of given the opportunity to make a better life for themselves and their families."

Ms Scales, who is also a member of the Howard League for Penal Reform, has attended Wandsworth to hear prisoners reading aloud from scripts and to see performances in the jail's theatre hall.

She said: "Prisons should be places of rehabilitation and learning. Some prisoners write and some are quite good actors. It's very therapeutic and you hope they will do more when they come out.

"A lot of crime is being committed because people don't have enough skills or they are bored. Lots of kids don't know how to use their often- enforced leisure time in stimulating, creative and cheap ways."

n Lord Woolf has been criticised for sitting in a recent appeal case relating to the Bloody Sunday killings. He was accused by the Celtic League, a cultural group representing Celtic countries, of failing to declare the fact that he served in the army.

Lord Woolf headed the panel of three appeal judges who last month upheld a High Court ruling that the soldiers involved in the 1972 Londonderry shootings should remain anonymous during the inquiry into the incident.

Lord Woolf spent two years doing compulsory National Service more than 40 years ago, mostly with the Army Legal Service, before he was called to the Bar.