James Timpson could be visiting one of the many shoe repair shops or dry cleaners owned by the eponymous family business that he ran since 2002. Or enjoying his reputation as an ethical capitalist, known for offering unusual perks to employees, including an extra week off for newly-weds and free use of company holiday homes.
Instead, the 53-year-old self-described “proper prison geek” is here at Isis, a young offender institution in south-east London, in his role as prisons minister after his appointment last July by Prime Minister Keir Starmer to the House of Lords.
As we proceed through security checks, pressing our fingers on a scanner, chatting amiably, we are distracted by an eruption of cheers and watch a group of young men outside the prison, face coverings pulled high, film their friend’s release. Timpson’s sunny mood dims at what appears to be a celebration of a hero’s return. This is disappointing to the minister, known as a rehabilitation crusader, who added “reducing reoffending” to his job title.
“It didn’t look good, did it?” he says. “It’s our job here, when they leave, to do all we can so they don’t come back . . . Too many people just keep coming round and round and round.”
You can tell a lot about the direction an ex-inmate will take, he says, by their reception outside. “If someone’s mum and dad come to pick them up, it’s far more likely to be a successful outcome.” This is in contrast to the footage of prisoners picked up in flashy cars by mates last year, under the emergency early release scheme that cut some custodial sentences to alleviate overcrowding in prisons.
We are meeting before the release of the sentencing review, chaired by former Conservative justice secretary David Gauke. Published on Thursday, its recommendations include deferred sentences for low-risk offenders with high needs, such as pregnant women, greater flexibility to use fines, and penalties like football bans — as well as cutting prison sentences by as much as two-thirds for good behaviour.
Timpson’s emphasis on rehabilitation breaks with prevailing policy over the past 30 years, which has focused on incarceration and punishment. Yet the minister inherits a prison estate described in a recent report as beset by “poor planning” and under-investment, resulting in “endemic” overcrowding and “overburdened” staff, which in turn undermine rehabilitation efforts. Recidivism rates in England and Wales rank “among the highest globally”, according to the Social Market Foundation, a think-tank. This is hugely costly to society — the Ministry of Justice puts it at £18bn a year, though others say it is higher.
While Timpson’s aspiration seems idealistic, he is no neophyte. Under his stewardship, the Timpson business, founded in 1865, hired ex-convicts, who today make up over 12 per cent of the workforce. As chair of the Prison Reform Trust charity for eight years, he established employment advisory boards in 2021 to help prison leavers find work. Can this businessman and committed prison reformer, who reads books on the penal system on holiday, mend the country’s antiquated system?
“This is not a quick fix,” he says, a point he reiterates several times over our lunch. “[But] a lot of people who leave prison have the potential to live a crime-free life, get a job, pay tax, have meaningful relationships and contribute.”
Timpson greets old acquaintances, guards and inmates as we make our way through several heavy gates. It would be easy to characterise his affability as that of a politician on manoeuvres, but as Timpson chief executive he would spend at least two days a week out on the road visiting shops across the country “because they often have the best ideas”.
Previously, his work uniform was chinos and a jacket, but on moving to the House of Lords he was quietly advised to buy some suits, so he dutifully took himself off to Marks and Spencer. Today he’s dressed in a navy suit and orange tie.
Emily Thomas, the governor of Isis, leads the way, a silver key chain attached to her belt loops, explaining that the institution was named after the ancient word for the river Thames, and opened in 2010, before the terrorist organisation of the same name emerged, a “disappointing” coincidence she says.
Situated next door to the high-security Belmarsh prison, Isis has capacity for 628 men aged between 18 and 27. The average length of stay is about a year.
“Very interesting work here on gangs,” Timpson says as we pass healthcare facilities, gyms and classrooms. About half of Isis’s prisoners are affiliated with a gang, according to a report by the Independent Monitoring Board, leading to violent conflicts. “They have peace wings, where different gang members are all together and they’ve realised it’s about more than being part of the gang, it’s about being part [of] the community, helping each other and giving them a way out.”
We arrive at The Cookout, the staff mess, which has bars on the windows and dingy white walls. Here, prisoners learn to cook and serve, often their first taste of legitimate work. It is not open to the public. Timpson’s diary secretary and press officer sit at another table, but the din of the canteen is so loud that our conversation is private — and at times I strain to hear him.
As we look at the menu, I remind Timpson that he once said he would never take on a political role. What changed his mind? He sets down his round, thick-framed glasses, the kind usually seen on architects. “With the previous government, I’d never have been able to do the long-term reform package that is needed. I would never have wanted to do it before. The stars [were] aligned.” It was a job with a high churn rate — with predecessors including Rory Stewart. “When Keir got in with a big majority, and really thoughtful insight into the criminal justice system, [I thought] that now is the time, and especially with the capacity crisis as it is.”
The job, first mooted when the election was called, had to be a family decision. “Everyone [said] you never get an opportunity to help so many people, so let’s just go for it.” This meant his father, Sir John Timpson, returning to the business at the age of 81. “He’s been very kind to give me the space because it’s so full-on. He’s enjoying it. He just [visited] 11 shops in Aberdeen.”
He says he has no plans to pursue a long-term career in politics beyond prisons. “I’m a one-trick pony.” Really? “My job as a parent and as a husband, that’s our priority.” What does his brother Edward, a former Conservative MP and children’s minister, think of him becoming a Labour peer? “He’s really supportive. I’m not a very political person. I’ve always been a natural Blairite. I believe everyone should get the opportunity in life.”
Menu
The Cookout
HMP/YOI Isis, Western Way, Thamesmead SE28 0NZ
Tuna panini with rosemary roast potatoes £2.50
Jacket potato with cheese and baked beans £3
Diet Coke £1.50
Tea £1.50
Tap water
Total £8.50
The FT has made a donation to the Forward Trust, a charity that works with former prisoners
The transition to politics was stressful, learning political jargon and the workings of the civil service. He also “underestimated how public everything would be”. If something goes wrong, “everyone knows about it all the time. In a business, they don’t.” I suggest this must be amplified by Elon Musk’s apparent obsession with the British justice system, and the related misinformation he has spread on social media. Timpson brushes it off, saying he does not have time to “look at Twitter [X]”, before conceding, “It’s important that you have to hear what the noise is and what people say. I just try to keep my head down.”
The private sector often maligns the public sector as bloated and wasteful. Is it? He describes colleagues and prison officers on the frontline as working “incredibly hard”. “In business, there is one point: to make money . . . Prisons, we’ve got to punish people, protect the public, and we’ve got to make sure when they leave, they don’t come back . . . It’s more complex.”
Our waiter, who is rangy with fluffy facial hair, and would not look out of place at a hipster joint, approaches, shyly recommending the chicken escalope, which at £3.50 is above the daily prisoner food budget. I order a tuna panini, and Timpson opts for a jacket potato with cheese and baked beans without butter. “It gets too soggy. I like dry food. I like fish fingers, I really, really like dry fish fingers,” he says. Soon, the waiter returns with our drinks — a Diet Coke for me and tea for Timpson, as well as tap water in plastic champagne flutes. Alcohol is off limits.
England and Wales have one of the highest prison populations in western Europe, due to the belief, established in 1993 by then Conservative home secretary Michael Howard, that “prison works”. While crime rates have declined, prisons have paradoxically been under tremendous pressure. According to the Institute for Government, “budgets have been cut and supply of places underdelivered, while sentences have continued to grow” — a situation exacerbated by pandemic delays in courts and increasing numbers in prison on remand. At the same time, recalls have “risen sharply” due to longer parole times and probation service problems.
The government is committed to creating 14,000 more prison spaces, but Timpson insists this cannot be the only solution. “We’ve got a new prison, HMP Millsike, [with a] 1,500 prisoner capacity. They’re very, very expensive. Hundreds of millions of pounds. But no matter how quickly you build, you cannot build your way out of a problem . . . The prisons are full today.” This makes it impossible to “get people into classrooms, get people into coaching activities, get into all the things that are going to help them not come back”.
As well as the Gauke review there is a separate review of courts under way, chaired by Sir Brian Leveson, known for his inquiry into the behaviour of the British press. “You cannot keep doing the same thing over and over again, you’re going to end up [with] the same problems,” says Timpson. “It needs a real sense of vision and direction, which it hasn’t had for a long time.”
Our food arrives with a slight tremor as the waiter sets it down. My sandwich comes with a pile of salad and a side of roast potatoes with a surprisingly delicate rosemary flavour. Timpson tucks into his baked potato, declaring it a solid “good”.
Timpson once said that only about a third of the prison population deserves to be there, with many better suited to serving their sentence in the community or receiving help from other public services. Is that still true? He swerves the numbers. “What we need to do is to address mental health and addiction.” To that end, he has set up a drugs and alcohol recovery expert advisory panel and wants more support in prisons. “If you arrive in prison addicted to drugs, have nowhere to live, mental health problems and a dysfunctional family life, and if you’re in prison you can still buy drugs, and when you’re out you don’t have any stability, then it’s probably likely you’re going to go back.” He is keen that many women avoid prison. “There’s also a lot of women, in my view, who are very ill, vulnerable, victims.”
This is not about being lenient, he insists. “There are some who are either criminally minded, ill, dangerous, and [we] need to make sure that they can stay in prison.”
Since his appointment, Timpson has been on a mission to understand the “detail” of successful interventions elsewhere in the world, and is fascinated by Texas. “They didn’t want to spend any more money building more prisons. They’ve now closed 16 prisons, crime has gone down by 30 per cent. Reoffending is massively down to levels that you only dreamt of.” (While good behaviour programmes have made an impact, the state’s incarceration rates remain high.) Spain’s prisons are far “calmer” than ours, Timpson says, while Norway is a “bit of a pin-up . . . in the prison world” but the “amount of money they spend on their prisons . . . and the culture of the countries is different”.
The British seem attached to locking people up. Can this change? Timpson sees it as a work in progress. Today, he enjoys a positive reputation as an employer of former prisoners, but in the beginning he kept it quiet. “I was sort of embarrassed because customers may not like it . . . I didn’t go out and publicly say we’re doing it, but people knew . . . And what actually happened was customers didn’t avoid going to the shops. They wanted to go to the shop because they were trying to support people.”
Now it is good PR. “It tells a story within the business that you care about people.” At the start of the year, with backing from retailers — Greggs, Iceland and Cook, among others — he launched employment councils, building on from his employment advisory boards, helping convicts into work. “It’s not just about their business, it’s about helping their communities.”
Visiting a prison over 20 years ago sparked his interest. “It gets under your skin, and then you want to understand.” There, he met a prisoner whom he later employed. His social conscience was also nurtured by his late mother, “an amazing woman” who fostered about 90 children, inspired by her own childhood experience, when her family was helped “by the generosity of friends . . . She always felt that if she was ever in a position where she could afford to give her time to help others, then that’s what she wanted to do.”
Many of the children were fostered because their mothers were in prison. “When they were released, often they used to come and visit us and a lot of them were very damaged women.”
His childhood home was in “permanent chaos, a lot of noise, some of the kids were amazing, absolutely brilliant, some of them were really challenging, some holidays ruined. Terrible behaviour, totally angry, damaged, angry young kids.”
Did he feel any resentment? “My parents were really good at making sure that we knew we were very loved and that the foster children were there to be helped. We were their children [as well as his brother Edward, he has three other siblings, two of them adopted] and the foster children would go one day.” He was not tempted to foster himself because “our lives were just so busy, and we got married pretty young, had kids really young, and then it was basically working full-time on the business, my wife works.” He laments his mother not living to see him become a lord. “She’d be really proud.”
After a geography degree at Durham University, Timpson joined the family business. His dad’s trust was formative. “If I came up with an idea that he thought was ridiculous, he’d say, ‘Well, have a go, if it doesn’t work, you’ve learnt a lesson.’” The motivation, he insists, “was running a bloody good business with really strong values”. (Most recent results showed profits 87 per cent higher, at £38.3mn, than the year before Covid.)
He won’t commit to succession plans, though his two sons are also taking on more responsibility. “They’re really great kids, and we’ve got to see how they get on.”
I give up on my food, which suddenly seems a little heavy, and I’m too slow to stop Timpson rushing from the table to settle the bill despite protestations that the FT has to pay. “But then I’d have to fill out lots of forms,” Timpson says. “I’m more likely to get in more trouble than you.”
After the Gauke review is published, some critics charge that the proposed reforms threaten to put the public at risk. Timpson messages me to set out again the logic of ending the prisons crisis, which currently “turns people into better criminals, not better citizens . . . This needs to change so there are fewer future victims.” I hope he is right.
Emma Jacobs is a features writer at the FT
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