What has prompted Richard Branson to encourage his Virgin group of companies to employ ex-offenders ? even rioters? Sir Richard Branson might not immediately spring to mind as someone prepared to stand up and champion a positive attitude towards ex-offenders. But he is actively encouraging his Virgin group of companies to employ people freshly released from prison, and even some who are still inside and working towards release. "Everybody deserves a second chance," he says, speaking by phone from Necker Island, his private Caribbean hideaway. "A lot of people end up in there [prison] because they've had a lot of bad luck in their lives." For the last two years, one of the UK's wealthiest and most high-profile businessmen has been suggesting to the managing directors of hundreds of Virgin companies that they take on ex-offenders. The numbers are sketchy ? "It's early days", says Branson ? but in the UK, the charity Working Chance has placed female ex-prisoners with Virgin Management. Virgin is also taking on male ex-offenders. On the problem of disclosing a criminal record ? very few people get an interview once they have ticked the criminal convictions box on a job application form ? he says: "It sounds like something we should look at, perhaps we should have a clause in our applications stating that Virgin does not hold a criminal record against applicants and that, on the contrary, we will try to help where that is the case. I'd be very happy to go that far." Branson was prompted to employ ex-offenders after spending a day in a high-security prison in Melbourne, Australia, two years ago, following an invitation from his friend and Comic Relief creator, Jane Tewson. "Jane is known for championing unpopular causes," he says. "She wanted me to see the work that was being done to get prisoners into work after prison and to see why it was so important." He met representatives from Australian transport company Toll, which over the past decade has employed about 460 ex-prisoners, none of whom are known to have reoffended so far. Branson was deeply impressed. "As soon as I got back to England, I contacted the MDs of Virgin companies and said to them that we must do the same; to try to take on as many ex-convicts as possible," he recalls. How did they respond? "Generally positive," he says. "I think that people at Virgin appreciate the fact that we are an understanding company. I had one or two negative comments on Twitter, but nothing that concerned me. One of the prisoners I met in Melbourne told me he'd been released with no money. He had to find his own way to the city. He was thrown back out into this world with no help whatsoever. The end result was that he was back inside in a very short time. For people coming out of prison it's a vicious circle. If they can't get a job, the only thing they can do is reoffend. From society's point of view that can be very painful." A chance remark by Jocelyn Hillman, the founder of Working Chance, which specialises in arranging recruitment for women offenders coming out of jail, led to a relationship between the charity and Virgin, with which Branson says he is particularly pleased. Hillman, who founded Working Chance four years ago, was being interviewed by a newspaper about her work. "I said: 'We need someone like Richard Branson to get involved'," she explains. "He read the cuttings and got in touch with us. He said: 'How can I help?'" Working Chance has successfully placed 173 female ex-prisoners with companies, including Pret a Manger, Sainsbury's and Virgin. Their reoffending rate is less than 5% compared with the general rate of about two-thirds of all adults released from prison, who are reconvicted within two years of being discharged. "We have a number of women working for Virgin Management," says Hillman. "One was taken on only last week. All are doing really, really well." Branson says ex-offenders will be considered on merit for any job within the Virgin companies, including aircraft cabin crew and catering or cleaning on trains. After the chaos of the summer riots in English cities, many people blighted their own lives as well as those of their victims, perhaps irreparably, by their moments of madness. Confessing to such involvement when applying for a job might add an extra measure of reluctance on the part of prospective employers. Would Branson employ a rioter? "Of course," he says without hesitation. "I made some mistakes. I could easily have spent time in prison myself over importing records and not paying tax. Then I would have had great difficulty finding a job. Virgin might never have happened and the 60,000 people we now employ might not have had jobs. So I'm sympathetic from a human viewpoint." He adds: "I've had people at Virgin who have been caught stealing and I've given them a second chance. We had one kid who was taking albums sent to us by record companies and selling them to a secondhand record shop. By giving him a second chance he became one of the best employees we ever had. "One of the reasons perhaps that I'm more understanding than some people is that if I go back to my teenage years when I marched on the American embassy trying to stop the Vietnamese war, I was running from the police wielding batons." In a letter to a newspaper last month, Branson and seven other chief executives, including Marc Bolland at Marks & Spencer and James Timpson, managing director of the Timpson shoe-repair chain, called for more companies to employ people with a criminal record. "Our experience shows that people from prison, if properly selected, will prove to be just as reliable as recruits who come from elsewhere. It is their personality that matters most," they wrote. The letter went on to say that prisons were harbouring "a large number of potential superstars who get ignored by employers because of their criminal record. It makes sense for UK companies to recruit these individuals and to make use of their skills and enthusiasm." Branson's advice to small businesses with a handful of employees is that many people ? including ex-offenders ? who are given positions above their normal expectations, excel. "At Virgin we had a cleaning lady who ended up running our studio division and a switchboard operator ended up running our charity in Canada. Giving people positions above what they would expect, they will do everything to prove themselves." Asked if the government could encourage more companies to employ ex-offenders, Branson replies: "It's about awareness, they [the government] have to make employers aware of the positives of taking on people who have been in prison." Could he advise the government on this issue? "I'm open to being helpful and having a look at what they are doing and if I can help I will," he says. There are no plans for Virgin to bid to run any UK prisons, but Branson agrees with government plans for prisons to be places of hard work. "The more productive you can make people while they are in prison the more they can learn and the better their chances of succeeding once they are let out," he says. Although there is no monitoring of how many ex-offenders Virgin companies are employing, Branson looks to Toll as a model. Over 10 years, the ex-offenders it has employed represent about 10% of its 5,000-strong workforce in Australia. "Over the next few years I would hope to reach a comparative percentage to what I found with the company in Australia. We'll see how we go," he says. "We have two or three hundred companies around the world. I don't run them on a day-to-day basis any more, but I encourage them and recommend this approach. I think most people will take on board my recommendations." Prisons and probation UK criminal justice Richard Branson Virgin Group UK riots Erwin James guardian.co.uk © 2011 Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliated companies. All rights reserved. | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds