Thanks for the input, QtM. Despite Mr. Archer’s recent holiday at Her Majesty’s Pleasure (albeit in minimum security), I think he may fancy himself an expert on the penal system based on a very short and atypical incarceration experience.
In the UK parole only operates on those convicted of crimes attracting sentence awards of 4 years or more.
Parole is a long and tedious process, which involves collating reports from most every area of a jail, from external probation officers, it could involve local priests certainly any family, possibly the local police and these are all presented to a parole board who make their recommendations.
Under that time, and above 18 months prisoners may apply for HDC - or Home Detention Curfew, which used to be for a maximum of 6 weeks before normal release, but this period has been extended recently and I’m not too sure what it is, methinks 13 weeks but I cannot remember where that came from, probably one of the regular sentencing updates.
A convicted person can serve more time when sentenced to 3 years 11 months than a person sentenced to 4 years if the latter get parole. I have seen this used by judges on property burglars quite often, annoys the hell out of the prisoner. 
Under 4 years and a prisoner is released after half their term is up, the remainder is on licence.
Being on licence means that conditions can be placed upon the former prisoner until the licence period expires, typical conditions on a licence could be exclusion from certain districts, not being allowed to associate with certain individuals, residency in certain places(especially sex offenders).
If a former prisoner breaches their licence they may then be returned to priosn without further recourse to trial and may then have to complete their full judicial award in prison.
Rules have now been changed and now, even if the original award is completed, a further period of licence conditions may be applied, however returning such persons to prison then requires further legal action.
One licence condition I have seen being employed more often of late is a requirement to attend college for basic education, or attend job seekers courses run by our unemployment department.
One fairly new policy is just starting to be seen in in prisons which is the ‘stikes’ rule. This can be for as few as two serious offences of the same nature as an adult, usually for crimes of violence or sexualy related offences.
Upon the final triggering offence the criminal may be sentenced to a life licence, the criminal may serve the usual award for thier offence, but on release they have licence terms imposed without any time limit and any breach can result in a very lengthy return, without recourse to the courts.The prisoner may serve as many repeat terms of imprisonment as their length of life allows.
We are just starting to see a first few of these come through, it takes maybe eight to ten years to accumulate enough qualifying offences and previous jail terms before these individuals get around to their last ‘strike’.
It is abosolutely true about the abysmal education standards of prisoners in the UK, howeve it seems to me that folk are putting the cart before the horse.
It is not poor education that is a cause of crime, rather the other way around, crime causes poor education.
Very many UK criminals cease attending school early on, most will not have attended class at all since age 12(whatever US grade that would be).
Even if they attended after that age it would be only for short periods and certainly not to learn anything.
I find it kind of ironic that the only thing that most of them are capable of reading and understanding are the UK tabliod press, whose bias, ranting, and distorted low brow reporting are the mainstays of the British blue collar workers knowledge of world events.
( We don’t care who rules Britain, just as long as they have big tits - kind of newspapers)
Education in UK prisons has to cover a very wide range of abilities and difficulties, in a prison with perhaps 1000 inmates, there will be so many differing requirements, that the current education program cannot address them.
From minor mental illnesses, personality disorders, dyslexia, through to virtually every level of intellectual ability, the number of staff needed to address even the majority of education issues would be huge.
The education staff are not particularly specialist at dealing with many of the problems either, such staff are fairly few across the UK as a whole, and so expensive.
Although Archer’s words, that education should be a higher priority, these are very nice but extremely difficult and expensive to implement, and when our voting public who, quite frankly, wants to see the majority of criminals flogged, killed, beaten up and generally abused, I just do not see how any politician is likely ever to gain approval for spending yet more money on our least worthy individuals, especially as there has not been any absolute evidence that education would actually reduce crime.
Anyway take a look here, but remember this is the corporate view and not necessarily the view of those of us who have to work face to face with offenders.
http://www.dfes.gov.uk/offenderlearning/init_p.cfm?ID=13
The reason for the cynicism is simply that the prison service seems to be more interested in quantities of qualifications rather than quality, to such an extent that courses with a commitment of 26 weeks are being replaced by those with a committment of 13 weeks, or in extreme cases, just one week.
The replacement courses are also run on a basis that an instructor need actually not know anything about the subject matter, as long as they are able to follow the procedure of assessment as laid down, these are known as NVQ’s.
Hmmm…literacy = parole?
I can see this will end up boosting the criminals productivity.
Imagine the time that criminals will save simply by NOT robbing premises with “Beware of the Dog” or “No Cash on Premises” signs.