It is refreshing to see the prisons minister, Rory Stewart, take the lead this week. He told MPs he would like to see fewer short prison sentences , and he’s right. People working in the criminal justice system have long waited to hear a minister say it. Some papers howled, predictably, but behind the outrage there is near-universal support from those who are closest to the system and know it best. The minister must ignore the opprobrium and hold firm.

As should his boss, David Gauke, who deserves praise for unveiling a new strategy for women. The Secretary of State for Justice has scrapped plans for new prisons and decided instead to create more women’s centres.

They can achieve what prisons cannot, working with other organisations to turn lives around and reduce crime. When properly funded, they offer services ranging from help with mental health, addictions and abusive relationships to support with housing, child care, tackling debt and finding a job.

All this looks good on paper, but it is hard to imagine the difference it can make until you actually speak to someone who has had their life turned around. Someone like Emma (not her name), who I met at a women’s centre.

View photos Frances Crook is chief executive of the Howard League for Penal Reform (Andrew Mason) More

Emma was a woman in her 40s, a rough sleeper for more than a decade, a heavy drug user and an alcoholic. She had been a victim of violence and abuse. She was very expensive in terms of police time — not dangerous but repeatedly arrested.

There are about 3,800 women in prison today — representing less than five per cent of the total number of people behind bars — but this mark hardly begins to measure the impact of women’s imprisonment on families.

Seven in 10 women who go to prison are sent there to serve sentences of six months or less. Last year, one in four was sentenced to 30 days or less. Almost 300 women were given sentences of two weeks or less — a short period of time but potentially so disruptive that a woman can lose her job, her home and contact with her children. More than 8,300 incidents of self-injury were recorded in women’s prisons last year.

None of this ought to surprise readers of the Evening Standard, which has reported on the rising levels of violence and self-injury in London prisons, which are under immense strain. Wandsworth, designed to accommodate 841 men, was struggling to hold 1,384 at the end of April. Thameside and Pentonville, each intended to hold about 900 men, were looking after 1,200.

But more prisons aren’t the answer, and the Government’s decision to build two more for men is bitterly disappointing. It will lead to more prisoners, more drugs, more violence and more crime.

The evidence is clear. Ministers have seen it and are acting on it with a new approach for women. Doing the same for men would make us safer. Who wouldn’t want that?