Welcome to the bunker, your need to know on news and politics five days a week. I'm Ros Taylor. A total breakdown of

law and order. That is what the new Justice Secretary Chabana Mahmood warned

would happen if she didn't release several thousand prisoners early.

For the victims of the crimes these people committed, this is not justice.

But Mahmood says she simply has no choice because of the negligence of the previous government.

Before the new PM, Kiestarma became director of public prosecutions.

The man in the job was Lord Ken McDonald.

He's now president of the Howard League for Penal Reform and co-presenter of the Double Jeopardy,

Law and Politics Podcast.

He's with me in the studio to talk about the state of our prisons and of our criminal justice

system.

Welcome to the bunker, Lord McDonald.

Thank you for asking me, Ross.

This is an appalling situation, isn't it?

Judges have handed down sentences that are now going to be cut short, and the only people happy about this will be the prisoners themselves.

Well it's a public policy failure of monumental proportions and it's not right actually just to blame it on the previous government.

We've been heading in this direction for 30 years.

We've had an arms race between the two main political parties who can talk

toughest on crime, who can increase sentences the most, who can reduce

a remission, who can tamper with parole, and the result has been a massively increasing

prison population, the highest in Western Europe by far, little or no prison building,

and it's a bit like running a brewery without manufacturing any bottles.

...