The National Audit Office’s report is one in a long line that calls for a reduction in the use of short prison sentences. Indeed it echoes one of the key recommendations from the Howard League for Penal Reform’s new campaign, Take Action 2010, which calls for the replacement of prison sentences of 12 months or less with community interventions.

If we were to design a criminal justice system that was guaranteed to create more crime, exacerbate the problems of disaffected and bitter people, and create more victims, this would be it.

When two thirds of our prison population get out of jail and reoffend, we question whether prison is making Britain’s families safer. When 70% of the people locked up in England and Wales have two or more mental health disorders, we question whether continuing as we are is the right option.

We know that people have lost faith in the system, and that despite doubling our prison population in two decades people do not feel safer and routinely express concern as to anti-social behaviour and crime. Given the stubbornly high rate of reoffending for those leaving prison this should come as no surprise.

134,000 people pass through the prison gates every year, 66% of those for sentences of a year or less. With no facilities to engage in anything meaningful, people are warehoused in custody for a few weeks then ejected back out on to the streets. Those given short prison sentences are set up to fail.

The criminal justice system should be helping people to solve the problems that led them to commit a crime rather than helping to create more problems and more crime.

Those on the right are having to change their rhetoric. They are stuck between a rock and a hard place; wanting best value for taxpayers’ money but reluctant to take what is often called a ‘soft’ line on crime and punishment.

Whatever is said in the press about the need for a hard line punitive response, privately everyone agrees that our current use of prison is not working, is unsustainable, and is slowing suffocating under its own weight.

Billions of pounds are spent on maintaining our prisons and building thousands of new prison places each year. Instead of tackling the underlying causes of crime by investing in communities and prevention, we spend ever-increasing sums on simply trying to manage the problem. In our flooding house, we spend our money on endless mops when we could look to fix the hole in the roof.

It is highly unlikely that we can carry on with the restless expansion of our prisons at a time of public spending cuts. And the need to reduce public spending over the coming years brings with it an opportunity to inject some sanity into our penal system.

The Howard League for Penal Reform believes the real soft option would be to continue punishing without efficacy, cost or purpose. The one year reoffending rate for community orders was 37 per cent in 2007. It is time that sentencers and the general public accepted that the ‘slam of the prison door’ effect is a myth that we should no longer buy into.

Photo: Ian Britain 2002