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With the prison population at crisis levels, a report published today calls for a rethink on the way jails are organised.

The prison population is exploding. More than 70,000 people are currently in prison, double the number of a decade ago. A further 12,000 prison places are planned for immediate construction. Each of these places costs £37,000 a year – almost twice the cost of Eton school fees. Yet prison doesn’t work. Six out of 10 inmates are back inside within two years of release. Six out of 10 prisoners are also illiterate and innumerate – they cannot take up the work available in the formal economy. The annual cost of failure is estimated at £11bn.

The cost of providing an extra 12,000 prison places will be almost £450m, yet the places are being provided in institutions that have been shown not to work, or in new prisons modelled on those failed institutions. It is time to end that cycle of failure and rethink the basic structure of prison life.

The organisation I run, called the Do Tank, today launches a set of proposals that aim to map out what the prison of the future should look like, and how it should be organised. The report, called Learning Works: The Twenty-First Century Prison, is based on the work of a team which included architects, educationists and senior officials from the prison service. We believe the proposals are both achievable and affordable.

Martin Narey, the director general of the prison service, believes that too. He has written a foreword to the report and will this evening launch our proposals. Our purpose is simple: to design a new building to support a revolutionary regime at no extra cost and to slash reoffending rates by providing individual learning programmes.

Over the past two years, I have visited many of the new prisons, which are being built at an unparalleled rate, as well as a number of the older Victorian institutions. I have met many prisoners who have clearly been traumatised by prison life; others cheerily greet the prison officers by name as they return yet again; most are just mind-numbingly bored. The daily regime and the environment – cells resembling (and indeed containing) toilets, and common areas offering little more than a pinball machine and broken blackboard – are designed to repress learning. Yet it is striking that the new buildings look identical to those built 200 years ago.

Prisons constructed in the 19th century, such as Wormwood Scrubs and Pentonville, were revolutionary in their day: beacons for the modernisation of other public services, including health and education. John Howard, the great 18th-century prison reformer, had argued for the creation of the first professional staff in the public sector, and for new buildings which would provide clean spaces for purposeful activity. But these Victorian prisons, suitable for the early industrial age, are now outdated: little more than massive holding pens. The solution is not to add more classrooms to the end of long wings, but to radically rethink the prison.

At the heart of our proposals are new architectural designs which maintain the highest levels of security while freeing up staff time and prison budgets. Maintaining Victorian buildings, which occupy valuable urban land, is increasingly costly. Escorting prisoners along sprawling wings to exercise, see their lawyers, or attend a class is labour intensive. The proposed “learning prison” would be at least a third smaller than existing jails. It has been designed to reduce the movement of prisoners within the jail, enabling scarce resources to be switched from security to rehabilitation.

The learning prison is made up of 11 houses, in each of which an accountable group of 36 prisoners will live in a small community. Cells are grouped on three floors around a central atrium, ensuring a secure inside and outside space where the prisoner is continually visible and can move unescorted.

The houses are networked for working and learning, with screens for individual intranet learning – an important resource for many who are ashamed to tackle their learning issues in groups. Common areas are also available for working, learning, counselling and exercise. Prisoners would be expected to work an eight-hour day and take part in community activities such as cleaning, cooking and budgeting. These too are learning activities, central to the prisoners’ ability to structure their lives after release. Inmates will have free run of a secure space, but they will be closely supervised by staff teams located in the house.

The role of the prison officer would be transformed. Officers would become facilitators, with opportunities for formal and on-the-job training, for learning and career progression. This innovation, like others we suggest, builds on existing best practice. Reduced rates of reoffending offer the potential for increased salaries.

Is this still a prison? Yes – prisoners are deprived of their liberty and free contact with family and friends. The surroundings are no longer mentally and emotionally repressive, but they are spartan. This is a place that you would not choose to visit more than once. That single visit should equip you with skills, internal discipline and the potential for personal transformation.

I invited some of the creative and innovative prison officers from whom I have learned so much to today’s launch of our report. Most of the invites were returned, marked “left the prison service”. The prison service cannot afford to lose those with vision, nor can it afford to continue building Victorian prisons to warehouse escalating numbers of prisoners.

The crisis faced by the prison service – low staff morale, a crumbling physical fabric and escalating prisoner numbers – is not unique, but it is acute. The service needs to recapture the revolutionary spirit of its predecessors and lead the way on public service reform.

· Hilary Cottam is director of The Do Tank and director of public services at the Design Council. Learning Works: The Twenty-First Century Prison is published today.

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TAWAS CITY, Mich. — Prospects are good for resolving a dispute over abortion that has led some House Democrats to threaten to withhold support of President Barack Obama’s health care overhaul, a key Michigan Democrat said Monday. (source: Seattle Post Intelligencer) – RSS news feeds and Widgets on Feedzilla.com

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NEW YORK — For Hollywood pundits, industry folk and Oscar fans still paying attention on Monday, a major question remained: How did David slay Goliath? (source: Seattle Post Intelligencer) – RSS feeds and Feed widget on Feedzilla.com

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NEW YORK — A construction crane owner got a bargain-basement repair job on a giant rig, which fell apart and killed two workers when the fix failed, prosecutors said Monday in announcing manslaughter charges against the owner and a former mechanic. (source: Seattle Post Intelligencer) – News widgets and RSS feeds on Feedzilla.com

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WESTMORELAND, N.H. — Two of the oldest people in the world have died on the same day. (source: Seattle Post Intelligencer) – RSS feeds and Feed widget on Feedzilla.com

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AP – The top-ranked Connecticut Huskies made women’s college basketball history Monday night — not that you would have known it by watching them.

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