Iceland supermarket could employ criminals to help them avoid jail

Iceland Foods could employ criminals at its supermarkets instead of them facing prison time, bosses have said.

The concept could see low-risk offenders handed a suspended sentence and given a role at the company instead of being jailed.

Paul Cowley, Iceland’s first director of rehabilitation, told The Times Crime and Justice Commission: “If it all goes well, then that’s your sentence. You don’t go to prison. You don’t lose your home, kids don’t go into care. And if it doesn’t, and it all goes pear shaped, then it’s a suspended sentence which kicks in.

“But it’s an opportunity to get rid of a custodial sentence. And I believe, and the company believes, that that would have some impact on reducing reoffending and our prison population.”

While the framework has yet to be approved, Mr Cowley and Iceland CEO Richard Walker have presented the idea in a letter to Prisons Minister Lord Timpson to discuss tactics to ease prison overcrowding.

Iceland has already launched the “Second Chance” initiative, which has seen more than 330 ex-offenders hired as front-line retail workers and delivery drivers as of August 2024.

A further 300 currently hold job offers from the company.

The blueprint set out to Lord Timpson encourages the government and other businesses to consider adopting similar measures.

Lord Timpson, the former chief executive of Timpson Group, pro-actively recruited ex-offenders during his time at the helm of the family business.

By the time he stepped down from his post following the last at the election, an estimated 10% of all Timpson Group employees were former convicts.

Lord Timpson has not yet publicly responded to the blueprint.

The proposals from Iceland come after government estimates published in December indicated that more than 100,000 people could be held in prisons in England and Wales by 2029.

Since September, thousands of inmates have been freed early in a bid to cut jail overcrowding by temporarily reducing the proportion of sentences which some prisoners must serve behind bars in England and Wales from 50% to 40%.

But prisons are still expected to reach critical capacity again by July.

Ministry of Justice figures show there were 86,089 adult prisoners behind bars in England and Wales in December.

The so-called operational capacity for English and Welsh men’s and women’s prisons is 88,822, indicating there is cell space for 2,733 criminals.

The Ministry of Justice has promised to find a total of 14,000 cell spaces in prisons by 2031.

Some 6,400 of these will be at newly built prisons, with £2.3bn pledged towards the cost over the next two years.

The Ministry declined to comment on Iceland’s proposal.