Experts on crime and punishment will be arguing the pros and cons of prison reform in the first live event of a new series of national policymaking debates being run by the University of Leicester.

The Leicester Exchanges conference being held at the Tower of London on Wednesday March 23 will tackle many of the issues raised by Justice Secretary Ken Clarke’s Green Paper on sentencing. Mr Clarke proposes to break the cycle of crime through more effective punishment and rehabilitation of offenders.

Various live events in Leicester and in London will bolster the discussions, and the first of these will address the question “Should we punish or reform offenders?”

One of the four expert panellists taking part is Carol Hedderman, Professor of Criminology at Leicester, whose paper on the Leicester Exchanges website argues that for most offenders, prison may express our disapproval and punish effectively, but it has an extremely poor record on preventing reoffending.

Reconviction rates suggest short prison sentences actively make people worse, she suggests, while probation is at least 7 per cent more effective.

She said: “At the Leicester Exchanges event I shall argue that the current debate confuses the notions of punishment and reform.  Prison is the most effective (ie painful) punishment, but the least effective mechanism for reducing most reoffending. Short sentences of less than a year are particularly wasteful in that they are expensive and seem to generate rather than reduce further offending.”

Another panellist, Heather Munro, the Chief Executive of London Probation Trust, says probation may include an element of punishment but that is not its primary aim.

“Punishment achieves short term solutions but real change in behaviour is what victims want and what society should promote,” she says.

“The political and media debate around offenders has not been balanced and the result has been to punish rather than reform.”

Blair Gibbs, Head of the Crime and Justice Unit at the Policy Exchange think tank, believes that an effective criminal justice system - and one that is legitimate in the eyes of the public - is one that does indeed properly punish offenders. 

“Rehabilitation for those offenders who can and want to reform is important, but it follows from the punishment, and cannot be a substitute for it,” he says. 

“Punishment and rehabilitation are not mutually exclusive. The best forms of punishment also rehabilitate.”

What most concerns the fourth panellist, Mark Johnson -- an ex-offender himself and now criminal justice consultant -- is how the rehabilitation is done. 

Mr Johnson, author of Wasted, special adviser to the National Probation Service and a Guardian columnist, argues that it is crucial to involve offenders themselves in any schemes intended to rehabilitate them.

An alternative ‘green paper’ summarising the outcome of this and other debates will be published, aimed at decision makers, academic thinkers and opinion leaders

Video recordings of each of the Leicester Exchanges live debates will be available online.

Other topical subjects on the Leicester Exchanges website include climate change, measuring happiness, travelling to Mars and “is Britain broken?”