TEACHING prisoners how to think and giving them social skills has failed to stop them returning to a life of crime, according to Home Office research.

The Prison Service had invested £200 million in the courses which aim to cut reconviction rates.

Prisoners who attended the courses were just as likely to reoffend as inmates who did not attend. Among medium to high-risk offenders, the reconviction rate was actually higher.

The programmes, intended to improve “thinking skills”, have been adopted in more than 100 jails in England and Wales. But the research found no difference between the two-year reconviction rates among offenders who took part in them between 1996 and 1998 and those who did not.

The Home Office researchers admitted that the results were unexpected because an earlier study had shown the courses to be successful. They insisted that their findings “should not be taken as evidence that these programmes are ineffective”.

Enver Solomon, of the Prison Reform Trust, said last night: “This research must be deeply disappointing, given that the Prison Service has invested so much in the cognitive skills programme.”

He said the findings raised whether the programmes had been sufficiently evaluated before being widely adopted.

Reconviction rates two years after leaving jail were 5.2 per cent for low-risk offenders who had been on a cognitive skills course and 5.4 per cent for those who had not; for medium to low-risk the rate was 21.7 per cent to 24.6; for medium to high-risk 52.4 per cent to 46.8; and for high-risk offenders 73.4 per cent to 75.

The courses, which cost an estimated £2,000-£7,000 per place, aim to control “impulsivity, develop greater empathy with others and improve thinking skills”. They were adopted after research in Canada suggested they were successful and about 32,000 prisoners have so far completed them.

Groups of eight to ten prisoners are taught to address self-control, problem-solving and moral behaviour. Some courses include role-playing exercises involving an argument over a woman in a pub. The prisoner is shown how to think his way out of the situation rather than assaulting the other person.

The study suggests that the early success of the programmes were successful because the staff and prisoners attending them were more highly motivated. Quality may also have been undermined when they were rapidly expanded after 1998.

The study compared 649 adult male offenders who had voluntarily taken part in the classes with 1,947 who did not. All the offenders had been jailed for six months or more, but none was serving life.

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