Feeble courts are the biggest crime of all

HOW many times do I need to point out that our prisons are full because our police and courts are too feeble, not because they are too tough?

Look at these figures obtained under Freedom of Information rules last week: a burglar who already had 44 convictions for break-ins was not imprisoned. Others left free included a lout who breached an Asbo for the 191st time, a so-called ‘joyrider’ with 26 previous convictions for taking cars, and, of course, a drug abuser with 29 previous convictions.

It is very difficult to get such figures out of the criminal justice system. And police absence and uninterest – plus the public despair which discourages the reporting of much crime – means that many thousands of offences are nowadays committed without ever being recorded. A career criminal has probably committed dozens of crimes before the police ever arrest him, several more before he gets anything more than a meaningless caution or an (unpaid) fine, and even more before he gets weedy community service or a suspended sentence that is never activated.

It is still much harder to get into prison than to get into university. Prison might scare such people into behaving if it was imposed on a first or second offence. If this happened, many others would be deterred from committing crimes at all.

But waiting till someone is a hardened criminal before locking him up is useless against criminal individuals, and deters nobody. Hence the endlessly growing prison population. But the liberal mind is quite closed to the solution. So nothing happens.