IT IS easy to solve crime by locking criminals up and throwing away the keys. No criminals, no crime. Forget about the wasteheap of human beings rotting in prison.

They’re not really human, they’re scum. Let them suffer as they made their victims suffer.

But are they scum? It is surprisingly easy to break the law. Have a couple of glasses of wine with a pub meal and drive home – you’re a car criminal and a menace on four wheels. The baby won’t stop crying when you’re stressed out through lack of sleep, job worries and the gas bill that’s just landed on the door mat, so you shake him to shut him up and break one of his bones. You don’t hate him, you’ve just reached breaking point.

But that makes you officially a baby basher, a child abuser, one of the lowest of the low. Let’s lock you up and throw you on the scrapheap with the rapists, murderers and paedophiles.

It’s easy to get emotional and deal in black and whites when it comes to crime and punishment. But crimes are committed by people on people and people come in all shapes, sizes and colours. Pandering to the right wing or insisting every criminal is a misguided saint is neither safe nor sensible.

By now you probably think I was in favour of Kenneth Clarke’s idea of a 50 per cent reduction in sentence for pleading guilty at the earliest possible moment. You’d be wrong. I was firmly against; firstly because the punishment should fit the crime, secondly because it hadn’t a hope of achieving its goal of reducing trials by persuading criminals not to play the system. I thought better of Kenneth Clarke QC of the Criminal Bar. He should know the games lawyers play and how any competent barrister can put up a case for a maximum reduction in sentence for a plea at the last possible moment.

But he does have the right idea about how to treat criminals in jail. Prison isn’t and shouldn’t be about society getting rid of someone. If we want to do that, hanging is quicker and much, much cheaper. Thank goodness we abolished the death penalty in the last century. Every human being deserves the chance to live. Yes, lock someone up if he refuses to allow other human beings to live a peaceful life. But once he changes his mind and proves it by the way he behaves, there is no reason to cut him off from society. So I support the Justice Secretary’s proposals to make prisoners realise the effect their actions have on others by making them pay compensation to their victims from their prison work wages. I support his plans to improve schemes to tackle drug and alcohol abuse and mental health issues affecting prisoners. Get rid of the causes of crime and you get rid of crime. I only hope Mr Clarke can persuade the Treasury to hand over enough money to fund the schemes properly.

Everyone has their breaking point. Everyone is capable of doing something heinous. The difference between the rehabilitated prisoner and the average law-abiding citizen is that the prisoner knows it and the average citizen may not.

Every time a prisoner looks in the mirror, he sees a devil. If he can face up to himself, he will be constantly on the watch against his own darker urges, and therefore he may be a safer person to be with than, say, a respectable young man on a stag night.

The best defence against crime is not locking more and more people up for longer and longer, but you and me and everybody else. Crime is a choice. It is up to everyone to police themselves so that they don’t choose it and don’t push themselves or others to their breaking point.