Alex Chalk has bought the prison service a little time – that's all

In his House of Commons speech yesterday, Justice Secretary and Lord Chancellor Alex Chalk shifted the blame for problems with our prison system, announced liberalising reforms and promised a bright future. Ultimately though he’s only bought a little time.

Chalk began by reaffirming the government’s commitment to public protection. In a significant shift rapists will now spend their entire sentence in prison, as opposed to half of it or two-thirds. While this headline will probably prove popular, it does carry some risk: under this arrangement they will be released without any supervision from probation. There’s a chance they will be more likely to reoffend as a result, but that problem is many years away when someone else will be Justice Secretary.

In reality, all these policies are likely to do is create a little more space in the prison system

Next came the excuses. Although Chalk acknowledged that the prison population is the highest it’s ever been – twice as much as it was three decades ago – he claimed this was ‘principally’ because of the growth of the remand population (prisoners awaiting trial or sentencing).