Good morning. If the answer is “prison works”, it now seems that the most likely question is: what is a good example of a demonstrable policy failure where successive governments have nonetheless decided to stick with the status quo?
England and Wales lock up more people than any other country in western Europe, with Scotland close behind; thanks largely to longer sentences, the prison population has doubled since 1993. But while crime has dropped considerably over that period, the same effect has been seen in countries that don’t lock up nearly so many people – and about 44% of freed prisoners are convicted again within a year.
