Leader from the Guardian:

The new man in black

As he warmed up his audience at Wormwood Scrubs last week, John Reid confessed that in preparing he had seen images of Johnny Cash playing at San Quentin flash through his mind. Whatever the political differences between them, the home secretary can at times seem to share the bleak outlook of the Man in Black.

Mr Reid went out of his way to tell the prisoners that they were unloved and then, in the style he has made his trademark, damned as inadequate something for which he has ultimate responsibility, in this case the probation service.

It is in the headlines because a heavily-trailed BBC investigation, screened tonight, shows paedophiles on probation getting close to children. Mr Reid's emphasis on what happens at the end of prison terms is overdue, but there are as yet few signs that the changes being considered will much reduce reoffending.

One option is simply to lock people up for longer rather than release them on parole, and it has been reported that proposals to do this will be unveiled this week. The suggestion is that judges will be freed to overrule automatic early-release dates and automatic discounts for a guilty plea.

Restoring judicial discretion is welcome, although it represents a departure from government policy of recent years. But, unless the spin has been misleading, the extra discretion will operate in only one direction: longer sentences.

If so, together with planned minimum sentences for carrying a knife, the measures will increase the numbers in prison. The result would be worse overcrowding, reducing the scope for rehabilitation rather than expanding it.

As the number of prisoners has surged, the reoffending rate has risen too. Mr Reid plans new prison places but these will be inadequate to tackle overcrowding, even on the Home Office's own figures. Packing even more people inside will worsen conditions.

Reforming probation on release could be more promising. The mooted rebalancing of attention towards those, like sex offenders, who most concern the public is appropriate. But it is important that ministers do not raise false expectations of what can be achieved.

Those under probation are not locked up, and the service will never be able to give a cast-iron guarantee on public safety. Like football referees, probation officers have a responsibility to show the red card when they see bad behaviour, but they cannot be blamed for every instance of it.

With individual officers in parts of the country responsible for as many high-risk offenders as there are hours in the week, there is a limit to the surveillance that can be targeted on each one. Public confidence in probation services has understandably fallen in the wake of high-profile failings. The status quo is not an option. But however good the service, some of those subject to probation will, inevitably, reoffend.

Mr. Reid's big idea last week, bringing the private and voluntary sector into probation, will not change this basic position. Non-state provision is not a new idea: the Conservatives tried to impose a dose of it nearly two decades ago, and chief officers retain freedom to commission outside the public sector.

Plans for mandatory outsourcing of a fixed proportion of the budget seem arbitrary and will make management difficult at a time when budgets are starting to tighten. It might be, at the margins, that there are things new providers could do better, as proved to be the case with prisons. But set against that is the danger of the probation service losing its overall picture of each case, a particular risk before its computer system is fully modernised.

Five years ago the Halliday Report stressed the importance of the "intermediate estate" of sheltered housing and hostels. These are important but can fail, as reports this week show. Until courts and the public have confidence in the system that follows release, as well as in community punishments, the engine driving prison overcrowding will not be switched off.

www.guardian.co.uk