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Hello and welcome to the Witness History Podcast from the BBC World Service with me

Alex Last and today we go back to the early 1970s and a moment which influenced legal reform around the world when England and Wales became

the first countries to introduce community service as a sentence for criminals.

By the start of the 1970s, Britain's prisons were full.

Britain has one of the world's largest prison populations.

We maintain 40,000 prisoners in Victorian conditions

designed for half that number.

It costs more than twice as much to send your son

to wormwood scrubs as it does to send him to Eaton. Present sentences,

particularly short-term prison centers were not affected.

John Harding was then a senior probation officer in Nottinghamshire in Central England.

In most people who go to prison for less than 12 months,

74% are going to re-offend because you just enforce their

problems. So prison in that sense was a failure.

Some of the younger chaps what are in here, They come in here well with small sentences and go out as animals.

So back in the 1960s a special panel was set up to look into alternatives to prison.

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