“You can judge a society by how well it treats its prisoners.” So said Dostoyevsky. I think he was right. And last week, the Justice Select Committee I sit on published a report that said our society is falling short. Let me be clear: prison must not be a holiday camp. Those that deserve to lose their liberty have harmed others, breached trust, destroyed lives and violated innocence. In those cases, the courts should not shrink from protecting the public and marking society’s condemnation. Some will require significant sentences. Six jihadists I prosecuted who plotted a bomb attack are each serving sentences of over twenty years. Not a day too long. But in a decent society prisons must be places of rehabilitation as well as punishment. They must be humane. They must focus on tackling the underlying causes of criminality – including poor educational attainment and substance abuse. The cerebral Justice Secretary, Michael Gove, gets it. In a powerful speech last year he cited that duty placed on those charged with the responsibility of punishment to seek out the “treasure…in the heart of every man.” But the current state of our prisons makes that very difficult. I visited a jail recently where inmates spend every second day locked up in their cells for 23 hours. It’s inhumane. It also makes rehabilitation practically impossible. No wonder that 45% of adult prisoners re-offend within one year of release. For prisoners serving less than twelve months the figure is 58%. And, saddest of all, more than two-thirds of offenders under the age of 18 re-offend within twelve months. Prisons have also become too dangerous. Assaults rose 20% in the six months to December 2015 compared to the preceding six months. Self-harm incidents went up by 11%. In There has also been a worrying increase in the availability of psychoactive substances, sometimes known as “legal highs”. They are addictive and can make users volatile. Through my work on the Justice Select Committee, I will be keeping up the pressure on Government to accelerate reform of our prisons. In doing so I am picking up the threads of a traditional cause for Cheltenham’s MPs. The greatly admired Sir Charles Irving was a founder member of the National Association for the Care and Resettlement of Offenders. He also campaigned tirelessly for the improvement of prison conditions. It is an example the Government would do well to follow.