This is a tale of two parties. It starts at a drinks reception in Manchester, where a senior Conservative is talking about prisons. In his view, far too many people are locked up. Like the Tory grandee Douglas Hurd, he thinks jail is an expensive way of making bad people worse.
Try telling that to the shadow home secretary, Chris Grayling, who will present himself to conference as the nation’s turnkey. Under his “mug-a-hoodie” strategy, the prison population would rise to 100,000 for the first time in history, and “street rats” could expect no mercy.
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