Leading article: A prison scandal that should shame us all

The Government's disclosure, in answer to a question tabled by the Liberal Democrats, that an average of 1.7 babies are born each week to women in prison, has a melancholy and Dickensian ring to it. True, the prisons into which these women are serving sentences are not necessarily grim Victorian fortresses, but it is a dismal comment on the state of our society that we even tolerate the idea of so many children spending their first months of life behind bars.

The fact that we now have eight mother and baby units in British jails is a direct result of judges' decisions to send more women to jail. The female prison population has risen relentlessly under New Labour. According to the most recent figures in May, the figure then stood at 4,458 – almost double the total for 1996 – although only marginally up on 2007.

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Most of these women serve only brief sentences, usually less than six months, for non-violent offences such as petty thieving, handling stolen goods and selling drugs. This is why the annual intake of women into prisons is actually far higher than the total figure for any one year. In 2006, for example, a staggering 11,950 women were sent to prison.

That most of these women get out soon, and that their children do not therefore live lives like that of Little Dorrit, is no excuse for passing over the figures with a shrug. On the contrary, the brevity of most of these jail sentences is precisely what should prompt questions, because it suggests that far too many people – and not just women – are being incarcerated for relatively minor offences, for which alternative treatments or non-custodial penalties might be much more appropriate.

No one is seriously suggesting that merely being a woman, or being pregnant, should constitute a get-out-of-jail-free pass. Women who have committed violent crimes may be just as dangerous to the public as men and require similar forms of restraint. But there is something problematic in the disproportionate rise in the number of women prisoners, as well as in the fact that one third of these women have no previous convictions. These are not hardened and incorrigible offenders, in other words.

Of course, the Government faces a dilemma here. In Britain, public opinion about crime tends more to the strictly penal aspect of prison than is the case in other parts of Western Europe, which may help explain why their prison populations per head of the overall population are lower than ours.

Miserable is the lot of the Home Secretary suspected of being "soft" on yobs, hoodies, druggies, or teenage thugs. By contrast, pledges to build more prisons and to jail more people for longer always go down well. Indeed, the Justice Secretary Jack Straw's speech today is expected to emphasise the punitive aspect of jail when he talks of the need to reclaim the notion of punishment as a necessary part of the whole prison experience.

But we hope the Liberal Democrats' success in teasing out the figures about the numbers of prisoners giving birth will nevertheless encourage a more enlightened discussion about cusodial sentencing, and that this discussion might start from the following points: that there is little point in incarcerating non-violent young offenders in overcrowded jails; that the chances of rehabilitating such people in a few months is almost nil, and that putting so many women behind bars is a symptom of a wider failure.