This is a great quote from one of the justice ministers I think. It should be the motto of the probation service, replacing the old one which was, believe it or not, "advise, assist and befriend".

So now we know how the govt is going to "fix" the problem they created, by giving in to pressure from the tabloids not to release anyone from prison early. They are going to convert laundry rooms, unused offices and storage space within existing prisons, into extra cells.

That is it basically. All the other measures we hear about in the media, will not happen fast enough to deal with the crisis that is going to occur in October when the early releases start.

They say they are going to build more prisons than at any time since the Victorians, but didn't David Gauke just tell them that was not the solution? The whole point of the new sentencing act was to reduce the numbers in jail. It does not matter anyway since these prisons will not be built by October.

They say deporting more foreign prisoners will have a big impact, but they have not signed new agreements with any countries to take anyone back, so nothing will change there.

IPP prisoners might be released, but this will take several years, because they have to change the law first. Also the Daily Mail will fight them all the way and they will probably u turn on this, like they just did on manslaughter.

Already the tabloids and the media are demanding another u turn. This time on domestic violence. They have found plenty of new victims, with terrible tales of abuse, to replace PC Harpers family. I could see this coming, because the govt is so weak that it gives in every time and the Sun and the Mail now know they can force more and more u turns, until nobody at all is released early.

Alex Norris was boasting about exclusion zones being the magic bullet that will solve everything though. They will stop offenders from going to the pub, or to football matches and that will protect the public! This is an absolute joke, because these zones will only apply to high risk offenders, not medium risk people like double murderer Simon Levy and they will be unworkable in practice.

At the same time, I was reading that there are actually empty cells in some of the new prisons right now, because they cannot recruit or retain enough staff to look after them. Nobody wants to work as a prison officer and who can blame them.

Meanwhile of course, huge amounts of resources are being spent on home visits to low risk SO, to make sure they comply with their draconian SHPO restrictions. Here is an idea then. Why not forget about monitoring low risk SO, and use the SHPOs and home visits for the newly released prisoners, instead of exclusion zones?

This is a quote from a probation officer. "There is a culture of giving many license conditions to those that don’t really need them but it is a 'just in case' scenario, not a fully fledged risk assessment and management process."

The same is true of the courts, handing out SHPOs to every internet offender "just in case", while ignoring dangerous killers like Simon Levy.