The number of career criminals being spared jail, we are told, has soared since the Coalition took office. An astonishing 4,000 offenders have been handed community sentences, despite each totting up at least 50 convictions.

The figure for 2010 – the year Ken Clarke took over as Justice Secretary – was 17 percent higher than 2009's and treble that of 2002. Incredibly, 408 criminals dodged jail last year even when being sentenced for what was at least their 100th offence.

Compare and contrast with the current policy of banging up this month's crop of rioters and looters, and it becomes very evident that we are dealing with a new principle of so-called "justice". People are being imprisoned not for the crimes they commit, or the severity of their offences, but for the circumstances in which they were committed.

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Here is a question, and it's not rhetorical I genuinely want to know; is it actually possible to implement a coherent policy of policing and justice in this country?

We've seen the degree to which separate areas such as the police forces, magistrates and the judiciary, the probation service and the prisons are often treated by the civil servants who run them as independent fiefdoms. Each has shown considerable and quite effective resistance to outside influence. Combine that with the degree to which these areas are now subject to various competing forms of control (parliament, EU commission, ECHR) and you have to wonder if, even in the miraculous event of the Tories actually coming up with a coherent policy, could they implement it?

I'm assuming a rational, coherent policy would almost certainly have to be imposed against significant objections from the groups who would have to carry out the policies. If the current government couldn't take on the Forestry Commission and win how are they going to do against the police and judges?

Could such a policy be introduced successfully? How? I suppose Labour was able to affect significant changes but these were hardly for the better and tended to increase bureaucracy which almost never raises significant opposition.

Very good questions ... which actually make this policy area a good test of government -- a test which at present it is spectacularly failing. In my view, there are significant measures which could be taken which could resolve some of the more serious problems, but it is unlikely that this government could ever bring itself to consider them. The interesting thing, therefore, will be to see how much of a train-wreck we get before the system explodes in the government's face.

The system has broken down. While foreign powers and potentates have Authority and jurisdiction in this Realm, then Betty Windsor is a nice old dear with a helluva council tax problem.
She cannot be Sovereign as she can be over-ruled. Thus the Authority that she invests in the Judiciary (in Her persona as the 'Fount of All Justice') has also evaporated.
All Judges who acknowledge the jurisdiction of Foreign courts (ECJ, ECHR) are in breach of Oath and without power.
I'd be careful how you tell them that though.

I seem to recall seeing earlier today that a woman has been sent down for two years for having 'photos of a little girl on her computer. But did I not see on this site recently a list of Councillors and a Judge who did not get this treatment for similar crimes, they only got a slap on the wrist, limp no doubt.

Sexual deviancy, especially indecent exposure, is frequently found in the previous convictions of those that commit arson. Useless information but very true!

I'm beginning to wonder if "The High" actually want a coherent policy or just "controlled insanity". It seemed that soon after The Ministry of "Justice" was formed, we saw some huge injustices such as the extradition on almost a whim, of some British people through the European Arrest Warrant. What's next? Maybe more of Orwell's prophecies, in 1984, will come about:

I remember reading only a few years ago that Arson was a definite incarceration crime. Innocent people were frequently killed as a result of arson.
This drunken thug should be put away for the next 20 years.

You simply underline the point ... sentencing policy does not compute.