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Good morning. Former Lord Chief Justice Lord Woolf says that conditions in prisons are now as bad as they were in 1990, when a dramatic siege at Strangeways in Manchester went on for 25 days. The prison population today is double what it was in 1990. It’s not surprising Lord Woolf thinks it’s time for a new inquiry.

Views about incarceration tend to split into four corners. The loudest voice comes from those who believe justice requires retribution. Imprisonment is society’s statement that something like burglary or assault is intolerable. Then there’s two parallel views, one that criminals need to be locked up to protect the public, particularly in the case of violent crime; the other that severe sentences pose a deterrent to any person making a cost-benefit calculation of whether to commit an offence. The quietest voice comes from those who say prison should be about reform and rehabilitation, and a system that simply returns to society people who’ve learnt nothing and forgotten nothing serves neither the prisoner nor the society.

Each of these four views makes a lot of sense in its own terms. Each of them becomes fashionable for a while as public opinion and government policy are swayed by notorious events and competing priorities. The trouble is, each of them costs a fortune. It costs forty thousand pounds a year to keep someone in prison.

Jesus told his disciples that those who entered eternal life would be welcomed with these words: ‘When I was in prison, you visited me.’ In the words of an old saying, ‘Every saint has a past; and every sinner has a future.’ Prison policy can’t start with a theory of human nature, and it can’t start with a balance sheet. Getting prison policy right starts, like Lord Woolf started in 1991, from visiting people in prison, recognising their flaws and their despair as well as seeing their hope and their promise. Because that affirms two things central to our society’s understanding of justice. First, whatever you’ve done, you’re a human being worthy of dignity and respect. Second, there’s something worse than being deprived of freedom – and that’s being starved of relationship.

But there’s been a new development in criminal justice since Lord Woolf’s report. And that’s a greater sense of listening to the experience of victims. Prisoners need to hear and understand the damage they’ve done to those they’ve injured, and the hurt they’ve inflicted that can take years or decades to heal. Visiting and listening to prisoners is important. Finding ways in which prisoners can confront the horror of what they’ve done is very important. But listening to victims is most important of all.

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