Britain’s prison system is brutal and broken. Why does reforming it seem so impossible? | Simon Jenkins

Prisoners are being released early because jails are overflowing. We know what better policies would look like – but politicians won’t act

Guess which public service is hardly ever mentioned in stories about austerity? The answer is prisons. Last week, prison governors were told by the justice minister, Alex Chalk, to send prisoners home two months early to free up cells because 99.7% of prisons were full. He must have been desperate. Imagine hospitals being told to send patients home two weeks e...