A prisoner escaped from London hospitals twice in a week, raising questions about security. But the real security crisis began decades ago, buried in Ministry of Justice data that shows how Britain accidentally engineered its revolving door justice system.

In 1945, just 18 offenders per 100 who left prison committed another crime within the tracking period. By 1964, that figure had rocketed to 31 per 100 — a staggering 72% increase that fundamentally changed how crime works in this country.

Those twenty years created the pattern we live with now. The numbers don't lie: we took a system where most ex-prisoners stayed clean and transformed it into one where nearly a third couldn't stay out of trouble.

What happened between 1945 and 1964? Britain was rebuilding after the war, cities were expanding, and traditional community structures that once kept released prisoners accountable were crumbling. The welfare state was taking shape, but the criminal justice system lagged behind. Prisons became warehouses instead of rehabilitation centres.

The timing matters because this surge happened during Britain's supposed golden age of social progress. While the NHS was born and education expanded, reoffending rates were quietly climbing. The infrastructure for repeat crime was being laid just as the infrastructure for everything else was being built.

This wasn't a gradual drift — it was a 72% explosion in criminal recidivism that set the template for everything that followed. Every escaped prisoner today, every headline about repeat offenders, traces back to decisions made in those crucial two decades when we chose containment over correction.

The contrast is stark: in 1945, releasing a prisoner meant an 82% chance they'd stay clean. By 1964, that fell to 69%. We'd created thousands more victims, thousands more crimes, and thousands more people trapped in cycles of offending.

Modern politicians love to talk tough on crime, but they're fighting a battle that was lost sixty years ago. The reoffending crisis didn't sneak up on us — we built it, brick by brick, between the end of rationing and the start of the Beatles.

Every time a prisoner walks out of custody today, there's a 31% chance they'll be back. That number was locked in during Harold Macmillan's era, and we've been living with the consequences ever since. (Source: Ministry of Justice, Proven Reoffending -- proven-reoffending_jan24_mar24_3_monthly -- A7b_(3_monthly))