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Commentators discuss Justice Secretary Ken Clarke's plan to get prisoners to work a full 40-hour week.

The that the introduction of work may help prisons' drugs problems:

"[T]he lack of any even vaguely stimulating activity produces the boredom that fosters the drug-taking, which is then tolerated by prison managers for the sake of a quiet life.
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"One of the Labour government's great failings was to fill the prisons in the name of being tough on crime, while doing little or nothing to tackle either the drug problem or the paucity of opportunities for training and rehabilitation."

Guardian columnist Erwin James, who served 20 years of a life sentence in prison, that Ken Clarke's idea will help rehabilitation:

"Enforced idleness, or constructive and purposeful work with real wages instead of weekly pocket money for chocolate bars and cigarettes?
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"... This is an excellent idea, though it is sure to create a legislative and logistical minefield, not to mention a backlash from supporters of former Conservative home secretary Michael Howard, who believed that enforced idleness - ie prison as it was when he was in charge - works."

that Ken Clarke has a challenge ahead of him convincing the right wing of his party that the prison reform is tough enough:

"His suggestion that prisoners be paid the national minimum wage for this work in prison is unlikely to garner much support from those within the party who already see his proposals as too lenient, though he claimed that this money would go towards restitution for victims. The Justice Secretary went some way towards getting his party on side today, but still has some convincing to do."

if the proposal is an effort to change perceptions that the coalition are vulnerable to crime:

"This stone kills a flock of birds: support for the victim, preparing inmates for regular work on the outside and reinforcing the idea that prison is deprivation of liberty and punishment. It's an important piece of re-positioning, aimed at the hall as much the country."

that this is a high risk policy for the Tories:

"The problem is we have been here before. There has been discussion about improved rehabilitation and better community punishment programmes for two decades or more without much being done to match the ambitious rhetoric.
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"Mr Clarke is trying to make a virtue out of a necessity - there is no money for extra prison places so he wants to improve non-custodial sentences so that fewer short-term sentences are handed out by the courts. But these programmes are also expensive - and if they don't work the criminals that would otherwise be in jail will continue offending. Which will push the crime rate back up -taking us back to where we were 17 years ago."

Finally, [registration required] when he says Ken Clarke's proposals compared favourably to those of his colleagues:

"Ken Clarke, as justice secretary, talked sense about prisons and then Theresa May made the least illiberal conference speech by any home secretary in two decades. They both got standers: he for being good old Ken; she because everyone had been sitting down so long."

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