Labour has realised that prison works – now use it to deter every criminal

HOW confusing for the Left to discover that prison works after all.

For years they have insisted its sole worthwhile purpose was to protect the public from the most savage and deadly of criminals . . . and that the threat of it rarely deterred any crime.

Even Labour’s new Prisons Minister James Timpson reckons only a third of lags should actually be in jail.

Except that admirably swift justice — and jail terms — stopped the riots.

The extremist thugs are not deterred by purple-haired social workers clutching “Refugees Welcome” placards but by tough policing, rapid charges and uncompromising sentences.

Even they have families and jobs they wish to preserve.

Home Secretary Yvette Cooper says the public have lost respect for police and the law and feel that “crime has no consequences”.

She’s right. It is shameful that this rot set in under the Tories.

But feeble police chiefs were following a left-wing soft-justice agenda, prioritising trendy causes and social media virtue-signalling.

The Tories’ failure was in their staggering inability to impose THEIR will.

We welcome that Ms Cooper now ­recognises “the deterrent effect of punishment”.

But here’s a suggestion:

Apply it to shoplifting . . . six months per theft.

A few years, too, for every Islamist thug chanting racist, genocidal slogans terrifying to Britain’s Jews.

You’ll soon see those crimes dwindle like the riots.

Lethal errors

ONLY now are the grotesque failures that freed Valdo Calocane to kill laid bare in full.

They are appalling and indefensible.

They almost defy belief.

A psychiatrist warned he could “end up killing someone”.

But eight times medics at Nottinghamshire Healthcare NHS Foundation Trust downplayed the danger after risk assessments — even though they knew that Calocane was refusing to take vital medication.

Then they lost him entirely, leaving him at liberty to butcher teenagers Barnaby Webber and Grace O’Malley-Kumar and 65-year-old Ian Coates in the street.

Who can fault Grace’s dad, a GP himself, for wanting every medic held ­personally to account for the incompetence which may have cost his beloved daughter her life?

He questions too whether Calocane’s refusal to take his meds should have disqualified him from the lesser manslaughter plea he was allowed instead of the murder charges the families wanted.

A fair point for the CPS to answer and the Attorney General to consider.

Health Secretary Wes Streeting rightly wants action to prevent such lethal NHS incompetence ever happening again.

But the GMC must not hesitate to probe the negligent medics responsible — and if necessary end their careers.