Ministers recognise they've got some more thinking to do on this

Apart from the obvious notion of justice, ministers are also concerned about the size of the prison population. They want to encourage the growth of tougher community punishment as an alternative to custodial sentences.

They fear that prison may not be the right answer for, say, a young first time offender, who has grabbed a mobile phone in a not too violent way.

Locking them up for 18 months in what amounts to a crime factory may lead to more offending whereas if you gave them a tough community punishment, you might have a greater chance of bringing them round.

I think ministers recognise they've got some more thinking to do on this.

They want to send out tough signals on the other hand they are anxious about the prison population.

How surprising is it that this announcement came from Lord Justice Woolf ?

That was certainly one of the reasons the government were taken aback. He has a reputation as a liberal judge who is by no means enamoured by prison as a cure for all ills.

However, the crime in front of him was very serious and it is possible that the Court of Appeal felt that perhaps the judiciary has been too lenient with violent phone robberies and Lord Woolf was anxious to send out a signal out to that effect.

But the youth justice board has done some work which shows that prison sentences don't appear to be much of a deterrent to young people and if you send them to Young Offenders Institutions such as Feltham there is an excellent chance they will reoffend.

What is the phone industry expected to do?

The government says they must make their phones much less attractive to thieves say they will legislate to force the phone industry to do this if nothing happens.

Why the big crackdown against phone crime?

At a time when it appears that most forms of crime are going down, this is one area that is still going up and there has been a quite significant increase in phone robberies and therefore it's an obvious area to tackle.

What is the next step?

The court of appeal has issued this judgement signal and as a judgement that influences judges behaviour and the courts in itself.

Beyond that, the white paper on sentencing which follows the Halliday report which came out last year, will set out what the government wants to do in a whole range of sentencing areas.