It's obvious Lord Clarke has never been the victim of crime.

I have and I agree with him. Never fear though, we have no tradition of making criminal justice policy on the basis of evidence of what actually works. The "prison works" lobby are firmly in the majority amongst voters, despite the overwhelming evidence that it doesn't reduce offending rates, so we will not see any let up in the overcrowding of our prisons for the foreseeable future.

@Ian It reduces offending rates while they're banged up. And that's the best we can ask for as 'reform' in general is a crock,

If there really is no evidence that longer sentences reduce crime, what’s the evidence that lower sentences and remand on bail reduce crime? If alternative treatment works so well, why not just dispense with prisons altogether?

Capital punishment would help. Instead of giving them a second chance to do it all over again..

I used to think lock them up. Fine them. We are in a situation when bailiffs are attending houses and there is nothing to seize. Let the right people remove graffiti from buildings. Clear overgrown gardens. Properly supervised wirk. In other countries it works. Link it to housing and welfare benefits. We need to be forward thinking on punishment and reparation.

I used to think lock them up. Fine them. We are in a situation when bailiffs are attending houses and there is nothing to seize. Let the right people remove graffiti from buildings. Clear overgrown gardens. Properly supervised wirk. In other countries it works. Link it to housing and welfare benefits. We need to be forward thinking on punishment and reparation.

@Bob. Of course, prison stops some offending in the short term, but compare crime rates in those countries who rely on imprisonment to address crime to those who rely on non-custodial reforms and the evidence that prison is hopelessly ineffective is overwhelming.

You can have it both ways. You can rehabilitate people and it does happen. Yet there are a large amount of people who have a huge number of convictions and have yet spent very little time in prison. Many people in prison are there because they had been given many chances, before finally being sent to prison. Public safety always seems to be forgotten about in these types of arguments. The majority of people in prison are there because they’ve committed a very serious offence or are a perpetual offender, whereby rehab just hasn’t worked.

The biggest cause of criminal behaviour is drugs and alcohol. Damn sure that alcohol is not going to be banned anytime soon.( hope not I need a beer or two) However drug addicts continue to commit vast amounts of property crimes to feed their habits. Maybe it might be time to think the unthinkable and prescribe drugs to them in clean controlled environments and warn them that if they commit offences and blame the drug addiction it will now longer wash and they will be going away for a considerable time. Mind you I am surprised that the prison population is so large as the number of people actually getting nicked these days seems to have declined with the reductions in police custody suites etc.

Was it not the Human Rights legislation which put a stop to such community service punishments as clearing rubbish from public areas, cleaning graffiti, etc etc…. The courts don’t impose a punishment which could be considered demeaning or is physical Labour. When the convict fails to comply with his or her community service order then all that happens is they are put before the court again. The London courts would refuse to deal with a defendant wearing a forensic suit after their clothing had been seized. We had to provide proper clothing…

He always was a lardi chomping, fine wine and port swilling windbag who doesn’t have to live with or deal with his left leaning liberal conservative ideas …. As long as they don’t impede access to the Lords or his gentleman’s club.