IT’S been a busy summer. Daughter sat her GCSEs, an on Thursday embarks upon a two-year stretch at our local FE college. Exciting times.

My own sixth-form was a bolt-on to my humble comprehensive, with subjects limited by the teaching provision. In comparison, the sheer breadth of courses offered by Truro College is mind-blowing. Daughter’s choices include law and criminology, the latter described by a fellow mum as “the one all the parents would like to do”.

It’s not hard to see why. A blend of sociology, law and psychology, criminology is the scientific study of crime: why individuals and groups commit crime, how society decides what constitutes a crime and how to deal with it, how victims are handled, and more. Student or not, you’re bound to have an opinion on it.

This is no more apparent than in present times, with prisons at 98 per cent capacity and politicians scrabbling for ways to make room for the next intake sent down from the courts. On October 1, prisoners convicted of less serious offences are set to walk free after a third of their sentence, to serve the remainder ‘on licence’ in the community.

Over the centuries, we’ve devised various methods for dealing with crime, from corporal punishment (hard labour, the birch) to capital, aka the death penalty. Prisons were invented by early societies to hold criminals in the short-term while punishment was decided; they became places in which to serve a sentence around the 18th century, with many purpose-built institutions still in use today (and showing their age).

Who should be in them, how they should be treated and how long for has been a political flashpoint ever since. Some subscribe to the idea of “lock ‘em up and throw away the key.” In contrast, historical figures fighting for the rights of the incarcerated include prominent Quaker Elizabeth Fr and John Howard, who exposed filthy 18th-century gaol conditions and to this day lends his name to the Howard League for Penal Reform.

I’m with Fry and Howard. How we treat people on the inside influences how they behave when they are back on the outside. Depriving criminals of liberty and luxury should be punishment enough, as brutalising them results in angry, vengeful individuals being tipped onto the street (37 per cent of prisoners are reoffenders).

Call me woke, but I believe prison should be a place where people who weren’t given a great start in life have the opportunity and support to turn things around – learn to read, find a trade, get clean.

In England and Wales, the prison population is around 87,000; 83,000 are male, almost half serving sentences of longer than four years. It costs an eye-watering £54k per prisoner per annum to keep them in jails that inspectors deem overcrowded and ineffective, precluding the kind of purposeful and physical activity that will put them back on the straight and narrow.

The current government blames the previous for increasing sentencing without building more prisons; cue changes designed to ease the pressure on the system. The initial release set at around 6,000 prisoners, was slashed to 5,000 following protests against releasing people guilty of grooming and child sex offences.

Now, the government has responded to opposition in memory of PC Andrew Harper, who died in 2019 after being dragged a mile along a country lane by a car driven by perpetrators who showed more amusement than remorse in court, where they were convicted of manslaughter.

"Harper's Law" was introduced in 2022, ensuring mandatory life imprisonment for anyone convicted of killing emergency workers. However, because the heinous crime that inspired the law predates it, those men were potentially eligible for early release. A petition against this, backed by the police, topped one million signatures.

So, with a bit of juggling, Prime Minister Andy Burnham has ensured those guilty of unlawful killing – including all forms of manslaughter and death by dangerous driving - will be blocked from scheme, balanced by measures including the deportation of thousands of foreign criminals.

I hope he’s able to draw a line under this now, and that another vocal pressure group won’t suddenly surface, insisting: “But not the people who hurt me/my loved ones.” Not to mention the “let ‘em rots”, who probably despair of the entire policy, wondering why a new prison or three can’t be built overnight.

Please don’t misunderstand me. When someone has been the victim of a serious crime – rape, abuse, the murder of a loved one – no sentence is enough, no apology sufficient. My sympathies are with them.

But while some people who go to prison have character flaws baked in for life, many are just on the wrong path, or mentally unwell, often let down by an equally overloaded adult social care system.

Cards on the table – I have not been the victim of crime. Does that make me less entitled to an opinion, or more clearheaded than someone who has? I can’t answer that question, and am only glad I don’t have to make these decisions.

In the meantime, while there are no prisons in Cornwall, I recommend a visit to Bodmin Jail, now a hi-tech museum outlining the history of prisons and punishment, and offering food for thought. And moving forward, how about a compulsory GCSE in criminology?