Did anyone see or hear about Ken Clarke’s prison speech yesterday? Much as it as odds with my default response to old Tories, I actually agreed with a lot of what he had to say. There’s a lot of Lib Dem in this policy, and it’s a shame we aren’t making more of that fact!

Stopping vast numbers of people being locked up for non-violent crimes on short sentences was a key Liberal Democrat manifesto commitment, and now the government are announcing that that’s what it intends to do.

It is simply silly to keep sending people to prison, if all that happens to them there is that they bide their time before being released to re-offend and head straight back! If people are detained, we should educate, rehabilitate, and make very sure that when they leave they are as unlikely as possible to re-offend again.

Sending people to prison for short spells is expensive, counter-productive, and not at all useful. Prison doesn’t work.

“Tough on crime. Tough on the causes of crime” is a great idea. But it didn’t happen, unfortunately. Lots more laws and stiffer sentences didn’t translate to lower re-offending. In fact, re-offending has gone up, especially amongst the young where it is now at really staggering levels.

Liberal Democrats believe that criminals should be caught and punished, but they should also be set back on the straight and narrow.  Prison places should be for violent criminals not first time petty offenders.

Of course, no offender should be let off or treated “softly.” Too often the alternatives to prison are just that. We need community sentences that really work. That instil a work ethic and a sense of responsibility and pride in offenders to stop them offending again. That’s why I’m such a fan of restorative justice and of schemes like community payback that we saw here in Prestwich. That scheme had small-time offenders renovating churchyards and removing graffiti in the community, as an alternative to prison. It focused their minds, gave them skills and something to be proud of, and it helped the community. It was cheaper than prison, and that type of scheme has been shown to cut re-offending by huge amounts.

The new policy is sensible, and it’s Lib Dem! I hope to see it work.

Rick