Prisons do damage. Is the British government finally waking up to this? | Simon Jenkins

We’ve been promised reform before. The scrapping of short sentences gives me hope that it may actually be happening

At least some MPs are doing their day job. This week the Commons justice committee demanded that all prison sentences of less than a year be scrapped, in a drastic measure apparently to slash the prison population in England and Wales, and because short sentences do not work. Assuming it does not just mean longer sentences, this is good news.

Jailing people is dumb because it trea...