Strapped for cash, but still desperate to put the population away John Reid promised to build 8,000 new prison cells. His panic increased when Gordon Brown refused to give him the money.

So the Home Office finance directors have come up with a way to allow the public to cash in on misery and help them out of a tight spot at the same time.

Using a set of tax breaks introduced last January the idea is to use some shabby financial scam called a "real estate investment trust" to encourage punters to invest in property - mainly hotel rooms and the like, but now jails as well.

Not surprisingly this model is already used in the US by the Corrections Corporation of America to finance their privately run jails.

There have been objections of course, with Harry (Norman Stanley?) Fletcher of the prison officers association reported as saying: "...shareholders would have a vested interest in seeing their jails were full as the more rent that came in, the higher the dividends".

You couldn't make it up? You simply don't need to.