Jonathan Aitken may have been studying the Bible in the nick, but as homecomings went, his did not exactly follow the script of the parable: no jubilant rejoicing, no killing of the fatted calf. Instead, his belongings in a bin liner, the jailbird's pallor on his gaunt face, the disgraced former minister sloped home to face the receivers' warrants and not a few people's schadenfreude. The cheerless lot of the pariah awaits him.

Or does it?

I bet that, after a year or so in the wilderness (or at Wycliffe, the Oxford college where he intends to study theology), the man who lied about his bill at the Ritz and forced his daughter to perjure herself will slink into the shadow cabinet. The Tory party holds an impressive record for clemency, even if Aitken will be the first jailbird to test it. Plenty of other disgraced figures have benefited from the Conservatives' faith in redemption (and the party's desperate need for able men). Just look at the fate of three politicos whose scandals filled papers and raised titters - Tim Yeo, now shadow secretary for agriculture; Cecil Parkinson, elevated by William Hague to chair the party; and David Mellor, now chairman (courtesy of new Labour) of the Football Task Force.

Some might argue that Aitken's spell in prison has earned him a black mark that is rather more solid than the ones his colleagues earned with their trysts; perhaps, but Aitken has ensured his own fast-track redemption by finding God in the clink. A Damascene experience is a tried and tested means to social recycling: Charles W Colson and Jeb Stuart Magruder, two Nixon aides sentenced for their role in Watergate, became born-again Christians while behind bars; now the former heads the Prison Fellowship Ministries, and the latter the First Presbyterian Church. (Their partner in crime, G Gordon Libby, who led the 1972 break-in of the Democratic National Committee, has become a syndicated talk-show host.)

Aitken's religious conversion will not only accelerate his re-entry into polite society; it will earn him the gratitude of those eager to shrug off any responsibility for the 60,000-plus prison population.

With Aitken providing such a shiny witness to the redemptive power of prayer and prison chaplains, who needs to invest in more expensive means of reform, such as education, training or therapy? And upright citizens everywhere can heave a collective sigh of relief: hand those brutes the Good Book, let them chat with the padre and hallelujah! - the sinner's a saint.

Aitken need not stay on his knees for long. God is not indispensable; our society rehabilitates politicians far more easily and quickly than ordinary criminals. We seem to think that after a spell behind bars, or a public fall from grace, a scheming middle-aged liar has atoned for his sins, and we show him a clemency we deny others - even young children, as was proved by the row over Sir David Ramsbotham's call for James Bulger's killers (now in their teens) to be freed. The chief inspector of prisons made a mild-mannered plea (in an interview in the New Statesman) to "give them some chance to make a life". He could not have sparked greater furore if he'd asked for all paedophiles to carry out community service in nursery schools. The press and the mighty responded in vehement unison: the kids were to stay locked up. Redemption was simply not their prerogative.

It is, we've decided, Aitken's. The born-again former minister, now pasteurised by prayer and psalms and proverbs, is off to study in the shadow of the dreaming spires. Soon, this grown-up whose career reads like a catalogue of greed and hubris is to be welcomed back among us; while two boys who committed one abominable act when they were aged ten stand condemned to fester behind bars. What will they make of this strange quality of mercy at Wycliffe, one wonders?

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