"Abolish prisons"? I don't think so!

So now we know: the Liberal Democrat who ran their Home Affairs brief, Mark Oaten MP, secretly wanted to abolish prisons and replace them with "education and training centres."

This isn't going to be a yah-boo "soft on crime Lib Dems" post, even though that's an incredibly easy target to hit.

I agree with Mark that prisons need to do more to deal with drug addiction (the main "excuse" for crimes like burglary and robbery) and that rather than equiping petty criminals with the skills to become more serious offenders they should emerge with skills to make sure they never offend again.

But these "let's abolish prisons" revelations aren't new - Mark Oaten admits he held these views when he was arguing the exact opposite as Home Affairs spokesman. They're widespread among Lib Dem activists. My criticism is not so much about what they believe (crazy though I find them to be) so much as it is about their dishonesty on the subject. In life, I've usually found that if someone is too embarrassed by their ideas to even admit to them they're on the wrong track.

My second problem with the Lib Dems is that while they understand that short-term prisoners need - and deserve - support to stop them reoffending they never, ever, seem to appreciate that prison is about punishing people who have done wrong.

There has to be a retributive aspect to our criminal justice system: prison should not be easy, prisoners should not be comfortable - it should be hard, gruelling and personally damaging to them - because it has to be something they want to strenuously avoid experiencing again once they get out. And not just for that reason but to give the victims some solace that their suffering has been acknowledged, appreciated and responded to by society.

Until the Liberal Democrats gain some appreciation of why those things matter, they'll always keep serving up stories like this one on a plate to their political opponents - and in the process they actually make it impossible for those of us, like me, who do believe that prisons should rehabilitate as well as punish.