But Mr Blunkett reserved his real outrage for one particular Tory failure

But Mr Blunkett reserved his real outrage for one particular Tory failure. “We have the worst record in any major industrialised nation for jobless households and there are around a million fewer men in work today than when John Major came to power,” he said. It was no surprise that David Blunkett, the shadow education and employment minister, attacked the Government’s jobs record yesterday after the release of figures showing another staggering fall in the headline unemployment total. They did the same when Hurd called for them to keep petty offenders out of prison Now they will be waiting to draw their cue from Jack Straw What he says in public they will obey He cannot talk tough and do good by stealth.

By shouting “Prison works!”, by stirring up the tabloids, by exhorting the judiciary directly, he changed the penal climate, and the judges responded. Judges and magistrates tune their sentencing policy finely to his words.Howard had not introduced any draconian sentencing laws until yesterday: the prison population simply rose at his bidding. In other departments, ministers can say one thing and do another – talk tough, act soft; or talk generous while acting mean. This intensive care and treatment cost no more, because offenders spent less time in prison.

Contrast that with the current insanity in the UK of cutting the probation service (which works) by 29 per cent and building 25 more prisons (which don’t).So how could Jack Straw do it? This is the really difficult part, for it cannot be done quietly, by sleight of hand. Take a prison programme monitored closely for 14 years in Massachusetts – it reduced reoffending by an astounding two-thirds. It gave prison governors discretion over releasing people, and control over budgets so they could choose to save on their prison budget and spend on letting prisoners out early with extra probation support, setting them up in projects and work, back home in the community, only letting go of them once they were safely settled. The best probation schemes can stop reoffending by up to 50 per cent more than prison sentences.There is good evidence about what works: anger-management, challenging offending behaviour, education, drug and alcohol projects, teaching people to think about their actions – soft stuff maybe, but effective. Returning to the Hurd levels (hardly days of wild, dangerous liberalism), Straw would save some pounds 480m a year, every year. He will be virtually the only one not handcuffed to a desperately inadequate budget. Now we need evidence-based crime and sentencing policy, treating it clinically, forensically.Straw will have more chance to do great good than any other incoming minister.

This will be devoted to what really matters – reducing crime and getting the best value out of the vast sums spent on it: pounds 10bn a year goes on police, courts and prisons. How? By careful study of research and trusting in the best scientific evidence, wilfully ignored by Howard Evidence-based medicine is the name of the game in the NHS. What will he do? Well, he does not have to implement most of the Bill at all. It can simply sit and rot on the shelf, most of its clauses superseded by a new and better Criminal Justice Bill of his own.

Richard Tilt, head of the Prison Service, has said 25 new prisons will be needed over the next 12 years.What a dismal legacy Jack Straw will inherit. All the professionals in the field, the prison governors and the Penal Affairs Consortium (the umbrella for all the reforming groups) regard that as a ludicrous under-estimate They reckon it will be around 24,000 more prisoners. The Lib Dem/Labour amendment allows judges to vary it for drug dealers and burglars in special cases. It in effect ends early release, instructing judges to give precisely the sentence they expect prisoners to serve.What effect will it have on the exploding prison population? The Government asserts that it will add 11,000 more. The probation service, which helps to preserve home links, is being cut nationally by 29 per cent, although those who leave prison without family ties are six times more likely to reoffend. Watching, appalled, the passage of the Crime Bill, Daly says, in the argot of his trade, “I’m not Strangeways shroud- waving, but in some jail somewhere there will be a last a straw soon.”To remind you: the Bill imposes automatic life sentences on second-time violent and sex offenders, a minimum seven years for third-time Class A drug dealers, and three years for third-time domestic burglars. In faraway jails, prisoners lose touch with their family, work and the outside world.