The result is crowded prisons. Despite vast expenditure on new places, the cost is put at almost £100,000 a place, our prisons have been overcrowded for every year for more than a decade. This is not fair on the staff who are called upon to act merely as turnkeys, processing people from overcrowded jail to overcrowded jail. Nor is it fair on prisoners. Many are sitting out their sentences in a shared cell, eating, sleeping and using the toilet in the same small space as another person up to 23 hours a day. Nor does it aid public protection to have longer sentences in which less is done. The reoffending rate after prison has risen from 51% in 1992 to 67%. Crowded prisons do not work.

Many want more prisons. But if that was the answer, we wouldn’t be asking the question now. For many years we have built and built, and prisons have filled up yet more quickly. It is like trying to deal with a  runaway train by building more track. Instead we need to ask tough questions about the level of mental health care, drug and alcohol programmes available in the community. We need community punishments that work and command public confidence. Then prisons and prison staff can do their job, holding securely and rehabilitating serious and violent offenders.