Profiting from crime

And that's exactly the word that call-me-Dave Cameron's party has used in its true-blue blueprint for Britain's justice system Prisons with a Purpose.

It's a fitting title for, make no mistake, behind all the welcome words on rehabilitation contained in the Conservative proposals, there is one clear purpose - privatisation.

In the United States, crime is big business. It's a multibillion-dollar industry where a host of companies have been gorging themselves on the public purse.

The Tories want to follow the US lead, inviting private firms to run every aspect of Britain's prison system from construction through to rehabilitation.

They even cite the US example selectively to back up its claim that the private sector can deliver a solution to high reoffending rates in Britain. They claim that handing our prisons and rehabilitation services lock, stock and barrel to the private sector is the way to turn prisoners into model citizens.

The US experience highlights the bankruptcy of such claims. There, a cabal of privateers lobbies for influence among decision-makers in Washington and at state level.

It's no coincidence that the brave new world of prison privatisation Stateside has heralded a massive growth in the prison population.

From less than 300,000 inmates in 1972, the jail population had grown to 2 million by 2000.

Every one of these broken lives pours more money into the shareholders' pockets.

The Tories want to hand control of prisons to super governors who would effectively be representatives of big business. It is these governors - or, rather, their paymasters' interests - that would decide on the fate of their charges.

Now, the Tories might claim that making privateers' contracts dependent on rehabilitation will provide all the incentive that they need to get reformed citizens back on the streets. Once again, it's been tried in the US. Once again, the flaws of private-sector involvement have been highlighted.

There, firms stand accuse of signing off prisoners who have not made the grade on the back of staffing shortfalls and budget cuts.

And there's no need to look to the US to highlight the failure of privateers - their dismal record in Britain speaks for itself.

G4S is already involved in the British justice system, coming under heavy criticism for cooking the books on tagging schemes.

Prison officers and support workers know exactly what privatisation means. Making money demands staffing cuts, poor training and low pay, with all the knock-on effects that these bring.

The crux of the matter is that private companies have no interest in rehabilitation or creating a better society. Their only motivation is profit.

Yes, let's have vocational education in our prisons, a properly funded system of post-prison care and better conditions for prisoners. Only a well-funded public-sector system will bring the desired results.

But, without tackling the root causes of crime - inadequate opportunity, shameful rates of poverty and a backward everyone-for-themselves Thatcherite philosophy - even these measures would only represent a sticking plaster applied to a weeping, cancerous wound.

This may not be "revolutionary," Dave, but it is plain old common sense.