UK’s Prime Minister David Cameron is calling for a prison reform so substantial it should be the “great progressive cause” of British politics. Ripping up decades of Conservative orthodoxy on crime and punishment, he has roundly rejected the old Tory hang ’em and flog ’em mantra of previous leaders and call for prisoners to be treated not as “liabilities to be managed” but “assets to be harnessed.” He wants to give up to half of all prison governors complete autonomy over how they run their institutions to improve re-offending rates. There will also be initiatives to try and reduce the overall prison population by extended use of satellite tagging and community punishments.