Labour's Shadow Justice Sadiq Khan has promised what he calls a "war on re-offending", aiming to cut the number of people who return to prison again and again. "Rehabilitation", he said, "is not soft on crime – it's tough on re-offending."
Re-offending costs the country £11bn per year, he said. One way to cut re-offending has been the restorative justice programme being used in Northern Ireland and held out by Mr Khan as a beacon, together with a 'triage' system being trialled in London.
It was all in line with what the Labour Party has believed for decades, in particular when he pointed to the appalling number of people with mental health problems who are languishing in prison – exchanging the Victorian asylum for the Victorian prison, he called it – and the number of women there for a first offence.
What he didn't mention is the fact that many are there for failing to pay fines – often imposed for failing to pay such things as TV licences – 150 per year in Northern Ireland alone, according to the Daily Mail, where...ah well, never mind.
He attacked the current government for: "Promising to be on the side of victims, but then cutting funding for victim support and slashing compensation to 46% of innocent victims of crime."
But, just a minute; earlier in the week, at a fringe meeting, he stated there would be no reversing of the cuts to the criminal justice system. So how will these initiatives be funded? Maybe the money will come from the savings made from cutting re-offending. It's Gordon Brown's economics again! You know: the ones that say we can finance extra spending from the extra taxes we'll get from the economic growth stimulated by...extra spending.
Looking for a little 'and finally' to lighten the mood, the Americans never fail to deliver. This week's loony lawyer award goes to the New Orleans prosecutor who was chatting to a couple of boys in blue in a courtroom when a spliff fell out of his pocket!
According to the New Orleans Times-Picayune: "...a pair of cops glanced at the joint on the ground, then at each other before making arguably the easiest collar in the annals of police work."
Perhaps the strangest comment on the affair reportedly came from David Lat, founder and managing editor of US legal blog Above the Law, who was quoted as saying: "Seems to me that maybe we should decriminalize marijuana if even government attorneys are being accused of these offenses."
It's a somewhat odd viewpoint that laws should be abolished just because attorneys break them. These pages, as well as those of Mr Lat's own publication, have often carried stories of fraud, theft and even kidnapping by members of the legal fraternity; is he saying that those crimes should be abolished, too?
Actually, it's not the first time this year that an American public figure has been caught red-handed with the weed. In February a county judge from Texas was found with 20 grammes of the stuff in a hotel room. The story is noteworthy because of the reporter Staci Zaretsky's use of the term "plebeian ways to relax" in the piece – possibly the first reference to plebs in this year's news.
Chris Stokes