Labour's solution: lock up criminals?

The Prime Minister is preparing this morning to meet George W Bush at Camp David.

But as even as he crossed the Atlantic, he was making waves.

Mr Blair spoke enthusiastically to journalists travelling with him about the ten-year crime-plan due to be announced on Monday.

Unkind observers concluded that it was a classic new Labour ploy: grab a few headlines in today's papers and then dominate the headlines again when the plan is officially published next week. Two bites of the cherry.

But this time, it seems, things may have got a little out of hand. The Home Office seemed genuinely surprised at this prime ministerial pre-publicity.

Pre-empting Auld's review

The plan itself is controversial: earlier this week, Lord Justice Auld, who has been working on a review of the Criminal Court system since 1999, warned ministers not to pre-empt his findings.

If putting people in prison actually did something to affect the crime rate, the United States would be the safest country in the world

Professor David Wilson

The terms of reference for his review are startlingly close to the plans leaked to newspapers today - they include proposals on night courts, specialist courts, the use of references to previous convictions, the composition of juries and what sort of cases they try.

It had been expected that the Auld report would be published by the end of last year. The delay is awkward for Labour. The party does not want to be constrained in its presentation of policies for the election campaign - but since it commissioned the report in the first place, it can hardly pretend it doesn't exist.

I fear we're in for short term political gesturing again

Simon Hughes

Simon Hughes, the home affairs spokesman for the Liberal Democrats, believes the government is playing politics with serious issues and that criminal justice policy is not served by short term political window dressing.

England worst for crime

Embarassingly for ministers, England and Wales have just come top of an international poll on how likely citizens are to become victims of crime.

The political risks of such surveys are obvious. Only yesterday, a detailed Mori survey for the Times on election issues showed Labour well ahead on most issues, but neck and neck with the Tories on Law and Order.

Locking up offenders

At the very heart of the Government's approach is the belief that Britain's problem can be laid at the door of 100,000 persistent offenders. If they could be locked up for much longer - they would, by definition, be removed from the streets - and the statistics.

If you have hardened, predatory criminals...if you detain them to protect the public, they can't commit offences while they're in prison

David Green

It's understood that the former BBC Director-General, Lord Birt, has identified this as the key to making progress on crime figures - like those for street-attacks, burglary and car-crime.

Mr Blair has already confirmed that 2,500 more jail-places are going to be provided. To underline the point, Tony Blair himself will on Monday become the first serving Prime Minister to visit a prison.

The World at One brought together David Green, a director of Civitas, the Institute for the Study of Civil Society, and Professor David Wilson, a former prison governor, now an academic at the University Of Central England to discuss whether locking criminals up is necessarily the solution to crime.