The end seems to be at hand at last for the long-festering scandal of people being sentenced to decades in prison for relatively minor offences.
The prime minister, Andy Burnham, is to be warmly congratulated for listening to the pleas of the prisoners, their lawyers, the campaigners and the (often lonely) campaigning journalism of The Independent. He has vowed to resolve the “long-running injustice” of indefinite jail terms as part of measures to ease prison overcrowding and stop PC Andrew Harper’s killers from being freed early. It proves, once again, the good that this work can do for the most vulnerable of people, work that is in the interests of society as a whole.
