Apparently Estonia has surplus prison accommodation which it’s offering to the British government (for rent, I presume) to help ease the latter’s critical shortage: https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/prison-overcrowding-labour-mahmood-estonia-b2607985.html. I understand that Britain has turned the offer down, preferring instead to build more prisons of her own, albeit slowly; and to release serving prisoners early in order to make more space in the existing gaols.

But I wonder whether it has occurred to the Home Secretary to ask why Estonia has so many empty cells, when Britain’s are bursting with villains. Are Estonians less villainous than Brits? Are the Estonian police less effective at hunting them down? Are murderers and rapists on the prowl everywhere in Tallinn? Or have they all emigrated to Sweden? (From some Sverigedemokraterna propaganda – and Scandi noir detective novels – you might think so.)

Or is it simply that the Estonians don’t use incarceration so much as a punishment? I know nothing at all about their penal system – I must Google it – but it’s well known that Britain imprisons more offenders than most European countries; and just a little less well known that Sweden – just a short distance over the water from the Baltic States – has a very liberal penal policy, with fewer (and nicer) prisons; which nevertheless appears to be more successful than Britain’s in deterring crime.

Isn’t this what that key-shop man (Timpson?) whom Starmer appointed to his government was meant to be looking at?