In response to Laura Perrins: It is harder to get into prison than Eton. But don’t tell Dave, JM wrote:

What always puzzles me is why people bang on about prison not working because of the re-offending rate. As you say, most people who end up in prison have taken a while to get there. Given that they are serial offenders on arrival, having been through the whole gamut of what the penal system can offer, why should prison succeed where all else has failed?

Like so much else, there is interconnectivity. Politicians like to view the world as a series of independent silos. They think if they fix one silo they will solve the problem. Life is not like that. If you want to cut the offending rate, you need to deal with family breakdown and single parenthood. Do that and you will go a long way to solving the housing problem, lack of educational attainment and criminal behaviour. But I suspect that that is one silo that the politicians dare not fix for fear of being ‘judgemental’ about people’s ‘lifestyle choices’ and in the knowledge that if they do try the press will mercilessly expose their every human failing.