It has emerged that prisoners have helped to maintain one of Britain's busiest railway lines. Inmates from an open prison have worked night-shifts on the main line from London to Glasgow. This is the same line where a train left the tracks earlier this year, killing one person and injuring several others. It is all very well to have offenders being rehabilitated through work, but what appears to be happening here is that rail contractors are cynically using prisoners as cheap labour. This is unacceptable, not just for safety reasons – important as they are – but because ultimately it is an infringement of workers' rights. If these prisoners are being paid less, or treated differently from regular workers, the practice must stop once and for all.