By Jon Silverman Home affairs analyst

Can't read health and safety rules? Sorry, no job

HMP Latchmere House, in south-west London, helps ease offenders back into community life. This is helped by finding inmates part-time employment ahead of their release.

But when a group of prisoners went to work on a local building project, the site manager was shocked to discover that a number were unable to read the health and safety notices. End of employment contract - and yet another example of the appallingly low level of basic skills among the UK's offender population.

The chief inspector of prisons, Anne Owers, says in a report released on Friday that Latchmere needs to do more to prepare offenders for work - she criticised a new education contract as being "seriously under funded" for the task.

Ironically, the Prison Service has achieved much in trying to tackle literacy and numeracy and address handicaps such as dyslexia. It's a remarkable fact that one in 10 of all adults in England and Wales who improved their basic skills last year did so from behind bars. The trick now is to make the same impact on offenders in the community.

Crime and punishment

"We're starting from a long way back," says the Commissioner for Correctional Services, Martin Narey. "This year, prisoners will get 50,000 basic skills accreditations. For offenders on community programmes, the comparable figure was 800 last year, with a target of 4,000 this."

I often wonder what I might have achieved if my dyslexia had been spotted earlier Prisoner Clive Diedrick

One of the problems has been the courts. Magistrates and judges are still too wedded to the idea that a short dose of custody is not only salutary but can help tackle the roots of offending behaviour. There is a reluctance to accept that a similar turn-around can be achieved on probation-supervised community punishment orders.

Another problem has been the probation service itself. Until recently, financial incentives have been offered to areas pushing a high number of offenders through programmes connected to drug treatment orders, but not to improving basic skills.

That imbalance has now been corrected and, backed by the Home Secretary, David Blunkett, and �10m of new money, there is an all-out drive to get offenders in the community into the classroom.

Late bloomers

In one such room in a probation building in Croydon, seven offenders are sitting around a table or in front of computer terminals. Several want to improve their reading so they can take the driving theory test. Since their crimes were driving-related, this could be of great practical benefit.

Offenders without literacy skills may struggle to find work

Clive Diedrick, out on licence having served half of a six-year sentence for possession of heroin, is tapping away confidently at a keyboard, despite his dyslexia. This handicap wasn't diagnosed until the start of his sentence - at the age of 43.

"I often wonder what I might have achieved if my dyslexia had been spotted earlier," he says. "From school on, I was labelled as a non-achiever and even when I've worked, it's always been a dead-end job."

Given that having a job is shown to halve the chances of offending, the link with crime is obvious for all to see.

The post of commissioner for correctional services is a new one and reflects the government's view that too large a gap exists between the prison and probation services.

Basic skills are a case in point. Too often, when an inmate leaves jail, he or she leaves behind whatever portfolio of work has been done during a sentence. It can be very disheartening.

"You can be given just a few days notice of release on home detention curfew [tagging] and the last thing on your mind is your portfolio," says Diedrick. "But later, looking back, you realise it may be the most concrete achievement of your time inside and it's probably been thrown out with the rubbish."