The government should take note when Mothers Against Murder and Aggression rightly say “there is no point in someone being locked up for six weeks and then released with the same issues and lifestyle because they just reoffend” (‘Repeat offenders who won’t reform commit half a million crimes’ Oct 27).

This week’s staggering statistics show almost half of prisoners released in 2009 re-offend within a year. They demonstrate that while our politicians obsess over the most serious crimes, our criminal justice system’s biggest failure is its counter-productive response to protecting us from more common crimes such as burglary. When there are proven, effective, and much less expensive ways to deal with such offenders in the community, the current Sentencing Bill should hold a presumption against repeating the failed approach of ‘short shocks’ in prison.