That last review was what merged the Probation Service and the Prison Service to form the National Offender Management Service. NOMS is known by a different name by the insiders who work at the Home Office’s Marsham Street HQ. They call it Nightmare on Marsham Street. So successful was Lord Carter’s brainwave that NOMS’ future is already in doubt.

So what is his latest bright idea? The sentence you get depends not on the crime you commit, but whether the prisons have got room for you. This is an issue I wrote about back in May, as regular readers may recall. Given my prescience, I might as well repost the highlights, since it deals with the issue succinctly (well, almost succinctly):

The prison population reached yet another all-time high this week – 80,658. This is almost double the figure for 1993. Prisons are full to capacity. It is incredible that ministers could not have seen this crisis approaching. They will have been able to monitor the steady increase in numbers in recent years, and so should not have to resort to panic measures. In one bus station car park last week I saw a mobile police caravan with a large sign on it saying “custody suite”. Apart from it sounding unfeasibly luxurious, it really ought to have just said ‘panic measure’. It doesn’t help matters that at a time when Government should be dealing with the prisons crisis, all those with oversight of prisons are focusing on is moving offices from the Home Office to the new Ministry of Justice.