David Gauke

In a landmark speech, Mr Gauke said that that the high rate of reoffending for those on sentences of less than six months showed that, for them and wider society, “prison simply isn’t working”.

There was, he said, “a very strong case to abolish sentences of six months or less altogether, with some closely defined exceptions, and put in their place, a robust community order regime”.

Among the problems with short sentences he cited were disruption to the lives of families when women went into custody and – for women and men – the loss of access to benefits and drug or alcohol support services and treatment.

Offenders were less likely to reoffend if they are given a community order, he said, because these orders were “much more effective at tackling the root causes behind criminality”.

The Lord Chancellor also noted that the government intends to make greater use of monitoring, pointing to the recently announced enhanced GPS tagging programme which aims to more effectively monitor offenders.