Prisoners And Work Placements

A man is in prison. The prison has a resettlement unit, the purpose of which is to place prisoners with local businesses in order to prepare them for release and possibly secure them an ongoing job.

Our prisoner gets a work placement with a small boat builder. He works as an unpaid joiner initially. Basically, he’s treated as if he was doing a period of Community Service. Having successfully completed stage one of his work placement, he then goes onto stage two in which he is paid for the work that he does. He is still a serving prisoner subject to prison rules. When he is at work he must honour the terms of the resettlement day release licence he has been given. Essentially, this prohibits him from drinking, taking drugs, gambling, using the employer’s telephone or receiving social visits at work.

Our prisoner’s period of paid work begins on 12 December. From that date until 6 June the following year, he is taken to and from work by the prison authorities. On 7 June he is released from prison and is pleased to be offered a job by the boat builder.

On 9 January the following year, he is sacked because according to the company he had become unreliable. He claimed unfair dismissal. However, as regular readers of this column will know, to claim unfair dismissal an employee normally has to have been employed for one year.

Our ex-prisoner can only say he has one year’s employment if the period from 12 December to 6 June, when he was a prisoner on day release, counts as a period of employment and can be added on to the time he was employed after his release.

The Claimant won before the Employment Tribunal but lost before the Employment Appeal Tribunal. The effect of this decision was that he was not able to claim unfair dismissal because he had not been employed for a year.

Whilst you can see that our ex-prisoner may feel hard done by, I can see the thinking behind the decision. The idea of day release work placements has a lot of benefits for the prison service, but it relies on the goodwill of businesses to succeed. How many employers would be keen to give prisoners an opportunity to work if they thought that the prisoner will soon become their employee, with full employment rights? 

For more information or advice, contact Jon Loney

Published 04/03/2008. The author of this article is Jon Loney