Rehabilitation Has to Mean Rehabilitation

If we expect offenders to rebuild their lives, eventually we have to allow successful rehabilitation to count.

9 September 2026

Sir,

Kemi Badenoch's argument that defeating extremism requires believing offenders can be rehabilitated is difficult to dispute. The interesting part comes afterwards, when rehabilitation has to mean something outside a speech.

Britain is rather good at telling offenders to rebuild their lives while remaining suspicious of their attempts to do so. Find work, but explain the conviction. Find somewhere to live, but expect questions about the conviction. Re-join society, but do so carrying a label announcing why you left it.

At some point, an offender must be allowed to become an ex-offender.

That does not mean pretending everybody can be rehabilitated. Some people remain dangerous. Public protection matters, as does punishment. But if somebody has served the sentence imposed by a court, engaged in rehabilitation, and demonstrated genuine change, it seems peculiar to treat every route back into ordinary life as another obstacle course.

Employment, education, housing and ordinary human relationships are not prizes awarded for good behaviour. They are rather useful if we would prefer somebody not to return to prison.

This produces an odd contradiction. We complain about overcrowded prisons, the cost of incarceration and people reoffending, then become nervous about many of the things that might prevent it. Rehabilitation apparently enjoys considerable political support provided nobody notices it happening.

Otherwise we have not created a route back into society. We have created a waiting room outside it.

Mrs Badenoch is right that rehabilitation has to be possible. The uncomfortable part of that argument is accepting what success looks like.

If somebody genuinely changes, eventually we have to let that change count.

R. D. Kerr