Incarcerating Fiona Onasanya - an upstanding, professional woman - is a waste of public money

So another black woman, who has led a near blameless life, has been sent to join the nearly 4,000 other women our prison-obsessed judges have sent inside. Most, like Fiona Onasanya, are in prison for non-violent crimes – or because they felt pressured to do something stupid to protect a member of their family.

The sentence is three months. She will serve half of that, and the second six weeks she will wear an electronic tag, for this part she will not be behind bars, but will have to stay in a designated address between  6pm. and 6am. It is an utterly pointless waste of public money, but will satisfy the nation’s hunger for increasing our prison population.

Under Margaret Thatcher, the prison population was exactly half what is it today. She was not some kind of Guardian reading, bleeding heart liberal for whom wrong doers were never wrong.  But in those days, Conservatives recoiled from imprisoning people – especially non-violent women – just for the sake of it.

That decency evaporated under a new Tory generation. Edwina Currie (remember her?) waved a pair of handcuffs at Willie Whitelaw from the rostrum of the 1981 Tory Party conference, as she screeched about tougher prison sentences.  Whitelaw, who won an MC in the battlefields of Normandy, needed no lessons on politics or courage from a wannabe Tory minister desperate to attract attention.

12 years later, Home Secretary Michael Howard – who embraced what might be called Edwinaism and with the approval of his boss, John Major – proclaimed a policy of “Prison Works”, unleashing judges to double numbers in jail, including women like Ms Onasanya. 

Ms Onasanya should have asked Lord Howard for advice before appearing in court. In 2016, the former Home Secretary appeared in front of a judge accused of speeding a few miles over the 30 mph limit.

His defence was brilliant. He said he could not remember who was behind the wheel as he and his wife drove back from their Kent country home to Westminster. He told the judge he just wasn’t sure. It might have been him. It might have been his wife. It  worked a charm. He was fined and took speeding points but a prison sentence – no way.

The argument is made that Ms Onasanya is both a solicitor and a legislator as an MP. Well, so too is Lord Howard. He is a peer, a QC, and a former Home Secretary.  If our judges are so wedded to exemplary justice, why make an example or Ms Onasanya but not Lord Howard?

The prison sentence will not make much difference to Ms Onasanya. It may well almost be a relief to spend the next few nights in Holloway before transfer to an open prison – all at huge expense to the taxpayer – and escape the relentless publicity. 

The tabloids and others will wallow in an MP going to prison. But whether it will stop a single driver from going just a tad over the speed limit is open to doubt.