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Good morning. Through the King’s Speech this week, His Majesty’s Government has promised longer jail terms for the most dangerous offenders. Cheers from those who respond to high profile criminal atrocities with: ‘Lock ‘em up, and throw away the key’ - and also occasionally from people simply fed up with constant offending being treated as low level but still leaving them fearful and out of pocket. The indignation is understandable: the remedy, I suspect, rather more complicated. The prison population of England and Wales is at an all-time high, and the announced replacement of custodial sentences of up to a year by community orders is just one attempt to address this – though the probation service is itself reported to be woefully overstretched. Suicides in jail have risen by almost a quarter in the past year. With most establishments seriously overcrowded, some men have the indignity of sharing cells which have no toilets, a practice supposedly ended in 1996. Understaffing, destructive drug use, increasing violence, and thousands of vulnerable individuals being trapped in a punitive system when they should probably be in a hospital: little wonder the training needed for rehabilitation simply can’t be delivered. I believe this should embarrass all of us, and prompt closer scrutiny of what’s been called ‘our most neglected, least visible public service.’ Yes, dangerous individuals need to be in custody to protect everyone else – for a very long time if necessary; and it’s important to remember the victims, whose pain can sometimes be a life sentence with little prospect of remission. But what happens to people locked up remains our responsibility. They still need humane care, the tools to prevent reoffending, the possibility of a new beginning. When Jesus said, ‘Blessed are the merciful, for they shall obtain mercy’, he wasn’t teaching a soft refusal to recognise evil – he knew how costly it could be, not least in suppressing desires for vengeance. He was reminding us that we ourselves are often treated much more generously than we deserve; and he placed the way we deal with prisoners as one of the great issues we face in any divine day of reckoning: ‘I was in prison, and you came to me’ – or did not. Some people of all faiths and none who’ve committed themselves to the prison service have long understood that they’re in the business of reformation. Dealing with the inadequate, the gullible, sometimes the breathtakingly wicked, they carry no illusions. But they choose to treat each of those in their care as a human being with God-given potential to change. Seems to me more creative than just locking them up and throwing away the key.