Who convinces you

Jack Straw, believes Frank Longford, is a penal reformer in his heart. He prays that Lord Woolf will make it easier for him to do the right thing
Straw or Woolf.
e must hate the sin and love the sinner.
Other penal reformers will face the same thought in their own way but it provides the same basic inspiration for all of us.
In the last fortnight we have encountered an historic contrast between the points of view of the two most important and one would think bestinformed authorities in the penal world — the Lord Chief Justice Lord Woolf and the Home Secretary Jack Straw.
By what I accept was a genuine coincidence both made vital speeches on the same day, arriving at different conclusions. I gather that Jack Straw had seen a copy of Lord Woolf's address before his own speech. But his own speech I am assured was in no sense an answer to Lord Woolf though it was inevitably treated as one by some of the press.
Lord Woolf, it will be recalled, produced an historic report on the Strangeways riot 10 years ago. He now set out to assess the progress or otherwise in the penal field since that time. He had some generous things to say about the good work that had been done but his main conclusions were of disappointment. And the reason was simple enough. We had come to send far too many people to prison. And overcrowding in prison made genuine progress impossible.
Again and again he went back to that simple message. It is impossible to talk of using prisons as reformative agencies so long as we have the present degree of overcrowding.
He pointed out that the population in prison had increased by 50 per cent since 1993 and it was generally calculated would increase a lot further during the next few years. I hesitate to summarise a very careful analysis but he insisted on one crucial reform. We must make community service orders much more of a reality as an alternative to prison.
So say all of us who have been concerned in our different ways, amateur or professional, for many years. Certainly, all the prison reform organisations agree with him, notably the Prison Reform Trust — which he was addressing — which has done such splendid work under the last director, now the ombudsman, and the present incumbent Lord Hurd former Home Secretary, now, the present Chairman was, unfortunately, in the Argentine during the lecture. I continue to look to him as the one man in this country who could recover the initiative for penal reform that prevailed in the days of Lord Gardiner, later Lord Chancellor.
The Prison Officers' Association assure me that they entirely agree and so I am sure does our wonderful Chief Inspector of Prisons Sir David Ramsbottom.
The problems in that area are by no means easy. In the end we may find ourselves driven to set up government bodies which directly employ those convicted of crimes. But the future undoubtedly lies in that direction.
What of Jack Straw? I have said many times that I admire him as a man not only as a Christian Socialist but as one who has shown to my personal knowledge real sympathy with ex-prisoners, such as my friend Bob Turney.
But he has responsibilities different from that of Lord Woolf. He has somehow or other to carry the country with him to maintain their confidence and I am not thinking only of the next election and lean of all of his personal career. Penal reformers, such as myself, would not last very long as Home Secretary.
WHICH BRINGS me to the crucial fact that what is best for England is not necessarily the same as what England thinks is best for herself. Lord Woolf can concentrate entirely on the first but any Home Secretary is all too aware of the example of his discerning predecessor R.A. Butler, who called "politics the art of the possible".
However, few of us become Home Secretaries. We must struggle for what is best for the country and bring pressure to bear in that direction. And now we have been given a notable lead by the Lord Chief Justice.
I turn now to an even more complicated problem. Who really decides the level of sentencing; how many people are sent to prison and how long are they sent for? Michael Howard when he became Home Secretary, announced that "prison works" and created an atmos phere in which sentencing became much more severe. In his four years in office supported at all times by the Cabinet, he brought about an increase in the prison population of 50 per cent without an increase in crime. By and large the present government has maintained the same atmosphere. Jack Straw when asked whether his policies would increase the prison population left it an open question. But whatever the statistics and the verbiage there seems to be little doubt that the prison population will increase.
The public seem all too aware of crime as a major problem of which we shall hear plenty from both parties in the election. And yet the general level of crime went slightly down in the last year. Violent crime increased substantially.
And the public assisted by the Press, particularly the Tabloid Press, appears to be all too crime-conscious. So the struggle between what is right and what is popular will become more and more evident. And those who believe that they know what is right will gain fresh strength from the lecture of the Lord Chief Justice.
Surely the courts who are responsible for sentencing will draw fresh guidance from his deliberate words.
It will always be uncertain how far prison can be looked upon as a reforming agency. Forty years ago I wrote a small book called The Idea of Punishment which, in a limited way, I still think said some essential though in no way original things. I distinguished four elements in a just punish ment: deterrence, preven tion (keeping wrongdo ers out of circulation), retribution and reform.
I repeat those words today. But I am not starry-eyed. Last Saturday I talked to a new friend of mine, Roger, a prisoner now serving a long sentence for a grave homosexual offence, but recently, I am proud to say, a Catholic convert with my hand on his shoulder when he was received into the Church.
He fears that the culture of prison will always make moral regeneration very difficult — one more reason for trying to make community service orders much more of a redemptive agency than they are at the moment.
Jonathan Aitken recently led two prayer groups in prison but he and Roger, I am sure, would agree that only a relatively small number of prisoners can be reached in that spiritual fashion. No one knows better than the Prison Reform Trust the immense difficulty of its task.
But it is by common consent made ever so much harder at the present time by the grave and persistent overcrowding which may well become worse unless present government policies are corrected.
So once again three cheers for Lord Woolf and may he exercise the same influence over the judiciary which he leads that Michael Howard exercised in the wrong direction.
And may he make it easier for Jack Straw, equally as I have said before highminded, to do what I am sure in his heart and knows to be the right thing.