Judge bans are solution to jail crisis

JAIL overcrowding is a stain on our country. Which is why the government has had to adopt early release schemes before prisons burst at the seams.

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Ministers are also working on abolishing sentences of less than 12 months in all but exceptional cases, because too often they turn minor criminals into major ones.

That does not mean going soft on crime. It does mean making community punishment a more effective and painful deterrent.