David Maddox: Why prison works

The only real activity in Holyrood today has been the fascinating debate on knife crime in a specially organised summit in the main chamber.

You will be able to read more detail in tomorrow's Scotsman about the summit, but as a means of background, it was called by the Public Petitions Committee following its reception of a 16,000-signature petition raised by John Muir, whose son Damian (pictured) was murdered by a knife wielding thug 18 months ago.

Inevitably the army of social workers, children's advocates, experts and so on have descended on the summit to push their liberal agenda and squash Mr Muir's call for mandatory sentences for people who carry knives.

The usual litany of excuses for these thugs have been wheeled out - they are disadvantaged, from terrible family backgrounds, prison doesn't work it just makes them worse, they need distracting, we need to understand them properly etc.

As you might imagine for a man who has lost his son, Mr Muir had some harsh words for the "do-gooders and limp handshake brigade." Their concern, in his view, was for the criminal and not the victims.

But the bottom line that seems to have been forgotten in all this is that prison may not be a great place to rehabilitate criminals (it probably should be), but it works because it takes dangerous people young or old out of society and protects the innocent from them. While they are behind bars they cannot be out on the street stabbing people or doing whatever other crime is their forte. True, many other things need to be done to treat this social ill, not least improving rehabilitation, but the protection of law abiding citizens should not be forgotten.

It always occurs to me that the "limp handshake brigade," as Mr Muir has dubbed them, more often than not live in nice areas where they are not confronted by thugs on a daily basis. If they did they too might want them put somewhere out of reach.