Prison won't work till we restore right and wrong, fathers and proper coppers: PETER HITCHENS

By PETER HITCHENS, COLUMNIST AND COMMENTATOR Published: 01:00, 9 August 2026 | Updated: 01:14, 9 August 2026 Prisons are a liberal idea which only work in a conservative country. If you don’t have strong moral rules, strong families and tough authority figures everywhere, from fathers to schoolmasters, park keepers and bus conductors to large, fierce constables patrolling the towns, prison will not do any good. The idea of keeping someone locked in a room for several years, as punishment, is really quite new, and a bit of an experiment. Before about 1800, we tended to transport criminals to distant colonies, or to hang them till they died. There were prisons, but they were just diseased dungeons where criminals were kept only till they expired of fever or they were sent to America or Australia. Then along came the reformers, and we locked malefactors up systematically instead. And it seemed to work. This was mainly because Britain in the 19th century went through a moral and religious revolution, and millions were brought up to believe in right and wrong. It was also because of the ever-present police, to remind them that they’d quickly be in trouble if they broke the law. And it was because the Victorian prisons of Britain were built in the middle of cities, with the clear aim of scaring wrongdoers into good behaviour. Look even now at the forbidding tomb-like gates, towers and walls of Wormwood Scrubs in London, Armley in Leeds, or Strangeways in Manchester. Nowadays the Government prefers not to use these grim old names. Until the Cultural Revolution and the Permissive Society got going in the 1960s, we had no problem with prison overcrowding, writes Peter Hitchens. Pictured: A guard at HMP Pentonville in London These days they are frightening for the wrong reason – because the prisoners rule inside them. Worse, gentle, innocent men and women can reasonably fear being thrust into their hellish, crammed halls and corridors. For our police, prosecutors and courts are worryingly given to locking up the wrong people. But when those frightening prisons were backed up by a traditional society, they had a very different message. How did it work? Many people will never commit a crime, so the fear of prison won’t affect them much. Then there are those who might be tempted, but who will be put off by a real fear of being caught and jailed. And then there are the incorrigible hard bargains. The last group used to be our basic prison population of about 20,000. The middle group, those open to temptation, have – since the 1960s – started committing crime in ever larger numbers. Once, they would have feared to offend. Now they have discovered that the police are absent, so they can commit dozens of crimes before even being investigated. By the time they get locked up, if ever, they are already hardened lawbreakers. It won’t do them any good or deter others like them. Prison comes too late in their lives to reform them. And the jails are no longer run by the lawful authorities. They are run by the prisoners. So they will come out worse than when they went in. Until the Cultural Revolution and the Permissive Society got going in the 1960s, we had no problem with prison overcrowding. There were just 27,000 people in prisons in England and Wales in 1960. Then, in a few short years, came mass divorce, weaker families, absent fathers. The police began to climb into cars and hide in offices. Teachers lost their authority. The old idea of right and wrong faded away. Instead, we just had ‘appropriate’ and ‘inappropriate’. Drug use spread as fast as morals shrivelled. By 1970 the prison population was up to 39,000. By 1990 it had almost hit 46,000. In 2002 it passed 70,000 for the first time. Now it is above 87,000, close to maximum capacity of 89,800. This makes it almost impossible to keep the prisons civilised or orderly. Prison officers, hugely outnumbered, are more like UN peacekeepers than old- fashioned warders. They must negotiate everything. But once the shared cells are locked, the weak must submit to the strong. It’s horrible. No wonder there are so many suicides. So the current row about how many and which prisoners can be unjustly and dangerously released early is empty. The debate about it is mostly meaningless posturing. Prison, as it is, neither punishes nor deters bad people. Even if all prisoners served their official sentences, most of them would still emerge just as dangerous as when they went in. We lost control of our society 60 years ago, and until we work out why (it’s quite easy, but beyond any politician I have ever met) we won’t get it back. Cambridge was unlucky to be the first of the two great English universities to be shown up as a politically correct joke. It could just as easily have happened to Oxford. These places have huge reputations which were long ago hollowed out by the ever-worsening effects of comprehensive schools. Now we have comprehensive universities, too.  Maimie McCoy plays Inspector Lucienne Hassell, Van der Valk's sidekick in the new ITV series Has Amsterdam lost its magic? It features wonderfully in the superb 1940 Hitchcock film Foreign Correspondent, the only movie I know to combine a car chase, Nazis and windmills. When I first visited it in the 1970s, it still had that romantic north-European aroma – now gone – of strong coffee and cigars. These days parts of it smell of something else altogether. Then it starred in the original 1970s series about a Dutch detective, Piet van der Valk, as an exotic, seedy countercultural city of drugs and prostitution. But now, who needs to go to Amsterdam for such things? You can get them in Surrey. I watched the start of the new ITV series of Van der Valk and couldn’t see the point of it. Marc Warren is an ill-tempered Morse-like Van der Valk. Maimie McCoy is his attractive – and possibly lesbian – female sidekick. Old Amsterdam has been swallowed up by a vast, bland new city of concrete and glass. And before we know where we are there has been a huge orange explosion. I gave up, and went off to read a Sherlock Holmes story. Inside the 'Mean Girls' atmosphere in Andy Burnham's government as top team of female ministers vie for his ear