My reform proposals don't affect the sentencing framework for rape or any other crime".
Most other solutions lie outside prison bars in adjustments to the sentencing framework, investment in community penalties and treatment for addicts and the mentally ill.
One primary objective of the paper is to simplify the law so that only one sentencing framework applies to all offenders.
The moderate package holds out the promise of an intelligent sentencing framework and a "rehabilitation revolution" that would cut the high reoffending rates of more than 60%.
Now, though, he is conducting an urgent review "with a view to replacing the current IPP regime with a much tougher determinate sentencing framework".
It also advocated a new permanent Sentencing Commission to introduce a "structured sentencing framework" that would take account of the available prison resources and curb the appetite of the courts for longer sentences.
"The lord chief justice is quite right to say that when the sentencing framework is set, the impact on the prison population must be properly taken into account," he said.
The judges decided that this breached the European Convention on Human Rights.While European law is taking away politicians' power to intervene in individual cases, Mr Blunkett wants to tighten his grip on the sentencing framework.
Britain could simply build more prisons, like the state of California, where the cost of keeping people in prison has recently exceeded the state's higher education budget, or it could debate finding some way of linking the sentencing framework to the resources available, he said.
In fact it sets out a number of moderate and carefully thought-out proposals which, if implemented, would go a long way to removing some of the confusion and complexity which has been introduced into the sentencing framework by successive waves of poorly thought-out criminal legislation, driven for the most part by a political agenda.
