Not just a Tory-Dominated Coalition?

I am, in effect, repeating what Mark Thomson has said on his own commendable blog, Mark Reckons; but you have to take heart at what Ken Clarke (the new Justice Secretary) said today.

Of course, I like Ken Clarke generally. He's a Conservative who worked under Heath and Thatcher, true, but he is definitely not hardcore right-wing. If anything, he's more Conservative Liberal than Liberal Conservative. Nevertheless, his announcement that the prison service needs to be used as the last resort, and not the first, is encouraging.

Clarke, lest it should be forgot, has been here before: he was Home Secretary from 1992 until 1993, when the prison figures in England and Wales were well under 50,000. The fact that the 2010 figure is 85,000, therefore, is worrying. That's roughly 1 in 1000 people in prison. Using a few examples, therefore, Falmouth's prison population has gone from 15 to 30, Plymouth's from 100 to 200, and London's: well, you get the idea. That's a lot of prisoners to "bang up". And Britain, quite frankly, doesn't have the capacity for that.

So yes, stopping people from going to prison may not be the most popular thing for a poor family that's just had their house burgled, or had their car stolen. But if the previous Labour government had to let prisoners out early because overcrowding was that bad - and it was - then is prison the only answer?

I must admit, having no experience of prison myself, that my best source of knowledge of life behind bars is The Shawshank Redemption, which is a brilliant film in its own right. But it is important to realise the dangers of over-relying on an institution; as shown by the very sad story of an old prisoner, called Brooks, who simply cannot cope with the outside world after being released.



Yes, prisoners have done horrific things. And they don't deserve our help. But my word, do they need it. Because if all you offer them is walls and bars, then that's what they'll adjust to.

And then they don't go back. Their problems are bottled up, as the prisons fill up. And new prisons are hard to come by in times like these.

So Ken Clarke has three options.

He can keep things the way they are, even though the prisons are overcrowded. He can decide to be even more extreme, and re-introduce the death penalty: because, as Dickens satirically put it, "Killing people was simpler than jailing them".

Or, he can decide that there's more than one way to deal with a criminal: encouraging community service is just one example. And that's exactly what's he's done. It may well be a victory of sorts for Liberals: but more importantly, it's a victory for common sense.

The Evening Stanners

PS If you haven't watched the Shawshank Redemption, I cannot praise it enough. It is well worth watching all the way through, but the scene with Brooks is excellent film-making. You can't help but feel sorry for him :-(