How unconvincing is the Tory U-turn on prisoner rehabilitation?  I just can’t see the point in pretending that slashing prison numbers isn’t simply about slashing costs while hiking taxes.  Surely Ken Clarke should have just come out and said so instead of inflicting on an already jaded public that cringingly artificial ‘road to Damascus’ conversion act.

I delivered a speech on the subject from the main platform at the 2006 Labour Party Conference shortly before resigning from the Party and just hours before Mr Blair bade us farewell as leader.  It wasn’t exactly on the agenda but I was determined to put it there.  John Reed, the then Home Secretary didn’t approve and shuffled as I spoke.  But I was determined to make the point that  our penal system is broken and just doing more of the same isn’t the solution.

I still believe that more needs to be done to rehabilitate offenders. But, if it’s worth doing, it’s worth doing properly and not just fudged in a cynical cost-cutting exercise. Here’s a short excerpt  from that speech in 2006:

“Our tougher approach to crime as outlined in the Policy Consultation Document, welcome as this is, can only ever be part of the solution.  We must also invest in the rehabilitation of offenders.

Our prisons are full to capacity, yes, we are tough on crime.  An yet, 60% of offenders receiving a custodial sentence go on to re-offend within 2 years of release at an estimated cost to society of £11 billion a year.  And where do these offenders go on release?  Well, they go back to neighbourhoods like mine.  And where do they commit more crime? Disproportionately in communities like mine.

Conference, if we as a Party really want to create communities that work, and if we as a party genuinely care about victims of crime, then we must go beyond the simplistic ‘out-of-sight-out-of-mind’, short term approach to crime and punishment.  We must take seriously the challenge to invest in the rehabilitation of offenders.

As we’ve seen from the alarming figures on re-offending and the associated costs, the failure to invest in this overlooked but much needed intervention comes at a price that my community and our society simply cannot afford to go on paying.

So, let’s not just think ‘crime and retribution’ as the Tories do, for all their hoody-hugging rhetoric, but lets also think ‘rehabilitation’, if not for the sake of the offender then for the health and sustainability of neighbourhoods like mine.”