\n<\/p>\n
In his letter about ever-lengthier prison sentences (18 August), Nik Wood makes two familiar mistakes in attributing the quote \u201cprison is an expensive way of making bad people worse\u201d to Douglas Hurd.<\/p>\n
In fact, the line appeared in a white paper published in 1990 by Hurd\u2019s successor, David Waddington. And there is no declaratory \u201cis\u201d. Instead, it warns that \u201cprison can be <\/em>an expensive way of making bad people worse\u201d unless other rehabilitative measures are taken.<\/p>\n Wood suggests that Hurd was \u201can unlikely figure\u201d to author such a thought. Waddington, a hardliner who supported the return of capital punishment, was far unlikelier. The true originator of the much misquoted line was probably the civil servant David Faulkner, a liberal on penal matters, whose influence on crime and punishment ended with the arrival of Michael Howard as home secretary. Have an opinion on anything you\u2019ve read in the Guardian today? Please <\/em><\/strong>email<\/em><\/strong> <\/em><\/strong>us your letter and it will be considered for publication in our <\/em><\/strong>letters<\/em><\/strong> section.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" In his letter about ever-lengthier prison sentences (18 August), Nik Wood makes two familiar mistakes in attributing the quote \u201cprison is an expensive way of making bad people worse\u201d to Douglas Hurd. In fact, the line appeared in a white paper published in 1990 by Hurd\u2019s successor, David Waddington. And there is no declaratory \u201cis\u201d.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":51884,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[56],"tags":[1295,211,3138,9551,25208,167,364,2798,2413,2414,6930],"class_list":{"0":"post-51883","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-crime-justice","8":"tag-bad","9":"tag-didnt","10":"tag-douglas","11":"tag-expensive","12":"tag-hurd","13":"tag-making","14":"tag-people","15":"tag-prison","16":"tag-prisons","17":"tag-probation","18":"tag-worse"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/51883","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=51883"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/51883\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/51884"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=51883"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=51883"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=51883"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
Jon Silverman<\/strong>
Former <\/em>BBC home affairs correspondent <\/em><\/p>\n