Community prisons, according to the Woolf Report, would be either prisons near to the main population centers, as many local prisons are now, with the facilities and accommodations capable of holding most inmates throughout most of their sentence. Another variation of the community prison would be an arrangement of clusters of separate prisons within a locality through which the inmate could progress. It was against the background of this recommendation that the National Association for the Care and Resettlement of Offenders established its Community Prisons Initiative. The project aimed to examine the implications of the concept of community prisons for such matters as the prison estate, allocations policy, the provision of appropriate regimes for inmates with different needs, the management of prisons, and the role of staff. This report contains a comprehensive examination of the concept of community prisons. The first part discusses the relationship between the prison system as a whole and the society it serves, and between each individual prison and the community in which it is placed. It argues for the breaking down of barriers between prisons and the outside world, so that organizations and individuals in the community can contribute to the work done with and for inmates. The second part of the report examines the use now made of the prison estate and the changes that are needed so more inmates can be held in community prisons near their homes. It recommends, among other things, the designation of many prisons as short-stay community prisons, holding the large number of inmates who spend less than a year in custody after sentencing.