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LEADING documentary film-maker Roger Graef spoke in Hatfield today and called for alternative methods to prison for punishing crime.

Mr Graef, who last year became the first maker of factual films to be made a fellow BAFTA (British Academy of Film and Television Arts), addressed a gathering of Unitarian Christians at the University of Hertfordshire's De Havilland Campus yesterday.

He said: "Prison is a cure worse than the disease.

"The imprisonment of one member of the family increases the likelihood of their children or younger siblings going into crime.

"Imprisonment is an avoidance of engagement by sentencers and often results from the media calling for more and heavier punishments - for people many of whom have been punished all their lives.

"When prisoners come out, bitter, with few prospects, no job, a strained if not broken family, further crime becomes almost inevitable.

"Far more reoffending takes place than is recorded because the real lesson of prison is not not to commit crime, but not to get caught."

Mr Graef, born in New York but now a dual national, has directed plays, television drama, opera and more than 120 films.

His subjects include crime, arts, current affairs, social issues and comedies, including The Secret Policeman's Ball with John Cleese and the first Comic Relief with Richard Curtis.

He developed the "fly on the wall" technique in Britain that gained him the first access to film in normally closed situations from boardrooms to prisons.

A founding director of Channel 4, he is a board director of London Transport and co-designer of the London bus map.

6:37pm Wednesday 26th March 2008

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