It has long been unfashionable to say this too loudly in Westminster, but prisons are vital to public safety and cutting crime. We need more of them.

Unsurprisingly, Labour’s newly appointed Prisons Minister James Timpson doesn’t agree. A key-cutting CEO turned prison reformer, he has a history of employing former inmates. He was until recently the chair of a charity whose top priority is to “reduce the use of prison”.

Little wonder then that his ennoblement and appointment by the Prime Minister received the sort of rapturous applause from SW1 that is normally the preserve of “Swifties” cheering the arrival of Taylor on stage.

No amount of “expert” adulation changes the simple fact that the rehabilitation narrative promoted by figures like Timpson is mostly a myth. In an interview with Channel 4 earlier this year, Timpson claimed that Britain is “addicted to punishment” and that we imprison too many people for too long. Apparently, only “a third [of prisoners] should definitely be there”.

This will, of course, be news to the public who see constant lawlessness on their own streets – and to crime-fighting police officers and victims of crime who routinely see perpetrators walk free. 

Only 1-in-10 prison sentences are for so-called “first-time offenders”, sentences hardly ever passed down for small misunderstandings or harmless misbehaviour. More than half of the prison population are there for violent or sexual offences – to say nothing of the burglars, robbers, knife carriers, or drug traffickers that some are all too quick to erroneously classify as “non-violent”.

We also know that nearly two-thirds (63 per cent) of prison sentences were handed out to criminals with seven or more previous convictions or cautions – with more than half (53 per cent) going to criminals with 11 or more previous convictions or cautions.

These are not individuals who made an honest mistake that we all might be guilty of. They are career criminals, enabled to commit crime repeatedly and persistently by a sentencing regime built on the idea of endless second chances.

Courts only intermittently deliver our best attempt at incapacitation for those who commit crimes: a prison sentence. Last year, those caught committing a crime with 15 or more previous convictions or cautions only had a 1-in-3 chance of going to prison.

That’s right – while the courts dished out 26,054 prison sentences to criminals with 15 or more previous convictions or cautions, there were nearly 49,000 occasions where members of this prolific cohort escaped with a caution or non-custodial sentence. Considering that a small proportion of repeat offenders massively overcontribute to high crime statistics, there is no good reason to let so many off with a slap on the wrist.  

It’s vanishingly rare for a prison sentence to be dished out that wasn’t deserved. By contrast, it’s commonplace to see unrepentant criminals walk out of court with a smug grin as they fist bump the air to celebrate their freedom. 

Be under no illusion that the majority immediately resume their criminal conduct – even if only a fraction are caught and show up in the “proven re-offending” statistics. 

If we want to cut crime, we need our politicians to display some common sense. Prison works and is an essential public service in need of serious leadership, adequate resources and expansion. Mismanagement and mediocrity must be banished.

Timpson favours “common sense” built on “the evidence” of the Netherlands, where “they have shut half their prisons”. The Dutch model is hardly sensible. Their average sentence for rape, in the three years prior to Covid, was just 1 year and 5 months. 

The shortage of prison places is not of the new government’s making. But if they think the answer is to empty the prisons rather than expand them, then they will turn a budding crisis into a chain of avoidable tragedies.

It will be law-abiding adults and children up and down the country who will initially pay the heaviest price for such folly – but it will be paid back at the ballot box in spades.