No government likes being told what to do. Especially over something so close to the Tory heart as law and order.

So news that the European Court of Human Rights has ruled that Britain's policy on denying prisoners the vote breaches theirs, has caused apoplexy on the right, and is giving David Cameron an almighty PR dilemma.

How dare the these Jonny Foreigners tell us what we can and can't do with out prisoners proclaims the Daily Mail brigade. But Britain is in the minority, most countries do allow prisoners the vote to a greater or lesser degree. And those defending the sovereignty of HM Prison Service would do well to look at its success rate before dismissing such reforms out of hand.

As Dostoevsky says you can gauge how civilised a country really is by the way it treats its prisoners. If this truly is a gauge then Britain must be barbarous land indeed. We have the highest prison population in Europe and one of the highest re-offending rates this is surely no coincidence.

Prison should first and foremost be a punishment, but it should also be a about rehabilitation. What use is punishment if it doesn't deter. If short term petty criminals, the vast majority of the prison population, simply serve their bird and are back inside within two months on another minor misdemeanour, is prison in its current guise really working?

It that well known politician and ex con Jonathan Aitken points out it is only a recommendation by the Human Rights decision is not a legal requirement. But the danger of pursuing this line is that as in with the ruling around slopping out, which cost the government millions in payments for so called breaches of human rights, the courts here put a great deal of faith in what their Euro colleague say.

Cameron has almost certainly accepted that change is inevitable or the taxpayer yet again will be the one paying for political dogma.

It may be that supporting a change, even if it is limited to short term prisoners, may not sit well with those on the marginal wings of the current government. But for the majority who see the failures of the current system as a stain on the UK's great reforming traditions it could be just another small step towards a justice system that that punishes without humiliation and offers rehabilitation rather than degradation.