Britain's "obsession" with sending offenders to prison has been criticised by the Archbishop of Canterbury.
In a wide-ranging speech on criminal justice, Dr Rowan Williams hinted that he believed many minor offences - including some kinds of theft - should not lead to jail.
He called for a commission of inquiry into the penal system. The leading churchman also warned against plans to extend privatisation in the prisons and probation sector.
Delivering the Prison Reform Trust annual lecture, Dr Williams said: "It is not surprising if we have a penal system that too often appears chaotic and ineffectual."
He did not comment directly on the prisons overcrowding crisis, which has seen judges asked to jail only the most persistent and serious offenders. "I say nothing though a great deal could be said, and indeed has been said in the last week or so of the way in which the custodial obsession, the creation of more and more offences with a custodial tariff, simply chokes the prison system and compounds all the failures in responsibility for prisoners," he said.
"Nor will I elaborate on the cost to taxpayers of an ineffectual and overloaded system, and the wider cost in patterns of reoffending because of the inadequacy and unevenness of responsibility-building services in such a context."
Any alternative system had to avoid repeating what he described as a "zero-sum deadlock". Dr Williams said: "We need clarity and honesty about what offences can and cannot be appropriately dealt with under the non-custodial and reparative model.
"Where serious crimes of violence and abuse are concerned and where a continuing threat to public safety is involved we have to think less about alternatives to custody and more about what can be achieved in the custodial setting, admitting that custody is an unavoidable element in society's response to the crime.
"But this means thinking very carefully about the tariff for many kinds of theft, for economic crimes more generally, for a good deal in the area of petty vandalism and drug offences to offer a few examples."
He added that short-term sentences for such crimes were simply a "vicious circle" for those who did not react to the stigma of a jail term.
