The social and economic costs of imprisonment have become too great to bear.We can no longer afford to get it so wrong.When you start talking numbers the scale of the problem quickly becomes evident. The prison population has soared by 25,000 in just over ten years. Previously it took nearly four decades (1958-1995) for it to rise to that degree. Each year over 132,000 people are now received into our overcrowded prisons and 70,000 children enter the youth justice system.

Talking tough, creating new offences, introducing a raft of mandatory penalties and then, under the Criminal Justice Act (2003) bringing in a new indeterminate sentence has led to massive inflation in sentencing. The misuse of prison to contain the mentally ill, addicts in need of treatment, vulnerable women and children and people with learning disabilities compounds the problem. It also provides a key to the solution in terms of the range of government department who must shoulder their responsibilities, alongside the Ministry of Justice, to create healthier, safer communities.

People are beginning to question whether we can afford this exceptionally high use of imprisonment coupled with shattering reconviction rates. Recent reports by the National Audit Office and by Matrix, and a review by the new economics foundation, all take an incisive, critical look at the cost benefits and value for money of the current system where each new place now costs £119,000 and the annual average cost for each prisoner exceeds £40,000. In November it was revealed in Parliament that £29 million has been wasted in one year on overspill police cells. Nor has investment been made in increasing staff numbers in prison and probation services or the Parole Board, despite rocketing central costs following the introduction of the National Offender Management Service.

It is difficult to estimate the social costs of needlessly high rates of imprisonment. But the impact on families, as well as the cycle of crime, will be immense.Today well over 150,000 children have a parent in prison. According to the Department for Children, Schools and Families, during their time at school 7% of children experience their father's imprisonment. Each year up to 18,000 children are separated from their mother. More children are affected by the imprisonment of a parent than they are by divorce. Yet almost no attention is paid to the needs of prisoners’ families and carers in stark contrast to well developed social policy and practice in relation to other life-changing events.

And what of those children who are themselves serving a prison sentence? The number of 15-17 year olds in prison custody increased by 86% in ten years from 1995-2005. Levels of assessed vulnerability are also rising year on year. Here we should stop and think of just one child. On 29 November 2007 notification was received of the death of a 15 year old boy in HMYOI Lancaster Farms. Early in the morning, Liam McManus was found hanging from a bed sheet tied to the window bars in a single cell on normal location. He was serving a sentence of 1 month and 14 days for breach of license. 

The death of a child in prison will send shock waves through government and so it should. His sad, lonely death raises fundamental questions about the use of custody for children. If anything good could possibly come out of such a tragedy, it would be for government to review as a matter of urgency its policy of locking our most vulnerable children in under-resourced, unsafe institutions.  

The forthcoming report by Lord Carter is a pivotal opportunity to advocate for a more sparing use of custody altogether. Public opinion polls show that what people really want is not vengeance but a system that prevents the next victim. By re-introducing proportionality in sentencing and meeting its commitment to reserve prison only for the most serious and violent offenders, government could begin to repair some of the damage caused by an addiction to imprisonment that has cost us dear.