Inmates serving lengthy sentences in English prisons should be given access to student loans, in a redrawing of Westminster government policy, according to MPs.
Under current student loan regulations, prisoners with more than six years left to serve are ineligible for loans for higher education study. Alex Burghart, the skills minister, recently told the House of Commons Education Committee that the government did not want to lend money to detainees “who have no prospect of paying those loans back”.
But in a report published on 18 May, the committee calls for a rethink, noting that reoffending “is lower in prisoners who participate in higher education”. For every 100 prisoners who take higher education courses, compared with those who did not, the number who reoffend within a year after release is lower by four or five individuals, the MPs say.
