While this report addresses the problems with the impact of austerity on the prison system in the United Kingdom, it offers a valuable source of information on how to combat budget cuts in correctional spending. This paper revisits the much argued question about the relative merits of prison and community sentences. We decided to write it out of a sense that debate has become trapped in an unproductive Punch and Judy fight about which of the two sentences works better. To anticipate our conclusions, assessed in narrow instrumental terms the arguments are more finely balanced than either side usually recognise. However, pro- and anti-prison camps are really arguing in an oblique sort of way about broader values, and if this paper helps to promote a more mature debate about penal policy that recognises this, we shall have succeeded in our task. (p. 5). Sections of this publication include: introduction; who is rightgeneral deterrence, the impact of punishment on the punished and differences in reconviction rates, keeping people who offender out of circulation and incapacitation, and cost-benefit analysis; and community or custodial sentences and what is their purpose. [read the full story here]