Last week I visited Rochester Prison - Young Offenders institute. (Young Men 18-21)

Rochester is the original Borstal - a large estate of mixed buildings - including the classic prisons that you see on the TV.

Going through the gate - I was there to meet with some of the young men that are undergoing training programmes led by A4e staff. The lads were great - we chatted one to one - they really wanted to find a way to get straight. So many things would have to go right for this to happen. Job, housing, education, straight friends, straight parents, good role models, staying clean, mentors, skills, self esteem - the list goes on.

The day before I was at a conference about all of this stuff. One senior guy involved with offender management made a powerful point - going to prison is the punishment - people should not be punished IN prison.

I think this is so miss-understood in the UK. Too many people reading the hype in the papers about prisoners having TV etc. get all upset. Some people even think that offenders should not get training.

The only way to change people's behaviour is to find their motivation to change and use education to literally drag them out of where they are.

There should be whole scale upskilling of all offenders - it should be compulsory - they should all be required to be actively engaged in job-hunting and learning.

Perhaps more community sentences should be used. The 'tags' should come with an absolute requirement to learn and improve your skills.

As a society we might have got it the wrong way around. Going to prison and losing your liberty is the punishment. The punishment for the rest of us is when they are released and do it again. Society is being punished by not training all offenders and finding them a decent job. We should insist that offenders learn and spend all their time looking for good work and increasing their skills.

A bit of a rant - and I am sure people have written many many theses on this - I look forward to the change! I'll certainly see if I can do my bit to change the way society looks at this.