The Times newspaper today published a letter from one of our former Heads of Chambers, His Honour David McCarthy, in response to Home Secretary Kenneth Clarke's latest sentencing proposals.

To the Editor

Sir,

From His Honour David McCarthy

There is nothing new in Ken Clarke's speech. We have been through it all before. Early in my time on the Circuit Bench, my colleagues and I were instilled with the principle that a defendant should not be sent to prison "unless no other method of dealing with him is appropriate". All the arguments in support were the same as those of Mr Clarke. The principle became law and we all did our best to apply it. The only significant result was that more people were free for longer periods to commit more crimes and did.

We need to understand as a matter of practicality that a certain proportion of the community will repeatedly commit crimes except when they are physically prevented by imprisonment. However we cannot in that way prevent all of them for all of the time. We do not have the resources and it would be contrary to basic principles of justice and mercy. All we can do is to contain the problem in so far as those considerations allow. That means that though the identity of individuals will be continuously changing, a proportion of the community will at any one time be in prison, thereby giving the rest of us a break from their activities.

There is nothing we can do about the situation except to manage it as far as we can. Nothing "works". It is part of human nature.

Yours faithfully,

David McCarthy