The slammer

Lots of publicity about prison over-crowding, now that the notional capacity figure of 80000 has been reached.

I've been a probation officer for nearly 27 years. When I started, there were under 40000 prisoners in the UK – less than half the current number. For someone to be sent into custody from a magistrates' court in those days was relatively unusual. That was seen as the job of crown court judges, and magistrates were expected - and keen - to use community sentences.

Now it is very common for magistrates to jail offenders, seemingly riding on the inexorable wave of encouragement to “get tougher” from both the two main political parties.

Prison can indeed be tough, especially for the first-timer and particularly in the first few days. But for those serving short sentences, it is emphatically not a place of rehabilitation. It is more a human warehouse where people are brutalised by their experience, and frequently learn very negative lessons. I have lost count of the number of offenders who have told me they developed their hard drugs habit in prison.

What this Government have got right is the introduction of indeterminate sentences for dangerous offenders, who now should only be released once they are judged safe enough. In the past, this sort of sentence only applied to lifers.

In other words, prison should be for public protection, and not punishment for low risk of harm offenders. For this group, community sentences are much more appropriate and potentially more successful, as well as being enormously cheaper.