No more room...

So our prisons are nearly full, and may actually fill up overnight.
Here's my take on why prison doesn't work - certainly not in terms of re-offending rates.

You know when you're waiting to pull out at a junction, and there's a constant stream of traffic with no-one letting you out? I bet you say "Come on, will one of you buggers let me OUT" don't you? You treat the stream of cars as a collective, a conspiracy, a group of like-minded individuals who are all sodding rude.
But they're not of course - they are a group of completely disparate individuals with little in common, and certainly not in communication with each other in any way.
So it is with law-breakers. No matter how much we would like to think of them as a homogenous criminal gang, they are just a load of individual people. So thinking that you can somehow appeal to 'them' with the threat of sanctions is simply ridiculous.
Two other reasons why prolonging sentences can never work; many who end up in jail lead totally chaoticl ives, and have difficulty planning from one moment to the next, let alone thinking of long-term outcomes of their actions. If they could think consequentially, they probably wouldn't hit the old lady in the first place. And the last reason? None of them are actually planning on getting caught.