Jonathan Calder’s House Points this week reminds me of something that angered me earlier in the week.

[Jack Straw] invented something called the ‘criminal justice lobby’ and announced that it has been running Britain’s prisons for the past decade. This of nonsense, of course, and not just because it is ministers who runs our prisons. Anyone who works with public sector professionals will know how quickly they come to endorse every new twist of government thinking. They know which side their bread is buttered.

But try telling that to Straw. According to him, the members of this lobby are obsessed with the needs of offenders when they should be worrying about the victims of crime – though he was notably short of practical proposals for helping those victims.

That particular sound bite was irksome because the needs of offenders ARE the needs of victims.

Assume there will always be criminals, and that the vast majority of them will commit crimes that mean their stay in prison will only be short-lived. It is in EVERYONE’S interest to make sure that time behind bars equips them to live a legal life on their release. Shoving them in the worst possible unpleasant stinkhole for a government-specified period then unleashing them unprepared on an unready public is not in anyone’s interest.