Muggers could lose 'short sharp shock' treatment - please tell me it's only temporary

Both Richard and I write about crime and punishment this week - him on chemical castration for extreme sex offenders; me about the end of what we used to call the 'short sharp shock' for more conventional criminals - muggers, burglars, car thieves and the like. The Independent Sentencing Review, published on Thursday, proposes permanently abandoning jail terms of less than one year. So that's it. No more three months for pickpocketing; six for pinching someone's car off their drive; nine for starting a pub fight and launching a nasty, unprovoked assault.

Instead, fines, community service, ankle tags and driving bans. There are two fundamental reasons for this shift in punishment: the first (and most pressing) is that UK jails are currently bursting at the seams and unless something is done to reduce the numbers of (mostly men) being sent to prison, the criminal justice system will simply implode.

The second is the oft-stated belief that short sentences are counter-productive: a few weeks or months in prison simply introduces a petty criminal to a 'club' of more experienced malefactors. The new boys are taught the tricks of the trade: they emerge from prison with improved skills in theft, drug-dealing, violence, and so on. Jail as a kind of school for scoundrels.

But the problem in sparing so-called 'petty' criminals from prison is that this denies their victims a sense of justice. Someone whose house has been trashed and smashed by a burglar is unlikely to be satisfied to see the intruder simply tagged and temporarily denied the right to go to the pub, or see his football team playing on a Saturday. They'll want to know he's banged up in a cell somewhere and given rubbish food to eat for a few months.

It also removes the power of deterrent. If recidivists know that crimes below a certain bar won't see them put away (the 'short, sharp shock') they'll be emboldened to keep on offending, knowing that the consequences of being caught don't amount to a hill of beans.

The government says it is building more prisons as fast as it can. So if these changes in sentencing ARE introduced, would it be too much to hope they're purely temporary? That when those extra cells open their doors for business, those who deserve to be treated to their newly-painted delights are given the opportunity?

Don't hold your breath.

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

Just look at Liz Hurley, photographed here in a publicity shot for her new Traitors-style TV series The Inheritance. Does this woman ever age? In even the teensiest, weensiest degree? She's seen emerging from a plush coffin in a plunging £425 Nadine Merabi gold dress. It's only that label which proves this is a contemporary image, otherwise it could easily have been taken 30-odd years ago. Liz is 59. I'll have what she's having.

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

I've heard of some odd gifts being given. The woman whose husband's birthday present to her was... a garden hosepipe. (Seriously). The mother whose children clubbed together for her 70th to buy her... a plywood newspaper rack.

The couple who exchanged Christmas presents: he gave her a small bag of onions.

Hers to him was a pair of pliers. (Both festive offerings, incidentally, unwrapped).

But Tesco have outdone them all with their new wedding gift set. A £63 Tesco Really Useful Stuff wedding package includes five packs of luxury soft toilet tissue, two tubes of toothpaste, a pack of bin-liners, a roll of kitchen towel, antibacterial handwash and some shower products. The initiative follows research which showed many couples about to be married admitted they would prefer 'practical' items to extravagant gifts like fine china or artworks.

And they say romance is dead!