Wimps and do-gooders call for less prison

Cherie Booth, president of the Commission on English Prisons Today, commended its report, saying that

The commission proposes that justice is more local. Crucially, more widespread use of effective community sentences would both allow us to reduce the use of prison and allow for reinvestment of resources into local communities to cut offending.

She makes two big mistakes in two sentences.

First, what does it mean for justice to be "more local"? Are the local people to have any say in their local justice policy, or is that only for the great and the good to decide? What if local people want local justice to be tougher? Douglas Carswell and Dan Hannon's book The Plan suggests one way for local people to voice their views about "local justice".

Second, she assumes that criminality is the result of under-investment. Was criminality so high when the communities were poorer? No. Could it just be that low detection rates and light sentences encourage criminality?

The Commission's chairman claimed that England and Wales punished criminals "harshly and excessively". I invite him to click the 'light sentence' tag under this post.

Judges regularly admit that benefit fraud is easy to commit and time consuming to detect. It costs us £2bn a year.

What about some deterrent sentences then?