"When God erects a house of prayer," wrote Daniel Defoe in 1707, "the Devil always builds a chapel there. And 'twill be found upon examination, the latter has the largest congregation."

If he were alive, Defoe might be looking with nervousness at the new proposals announced by the Home Office which would make it an offence for money to be paid to criminals for publications about their crimes. Put in the pillory and then in Newgate jail for seditious libel after publishing his pamphlet, The Shortest Way With Dissenters, Defoe wrote a Hymn to the Pillory, the triumphalist tone of which would doubtless have upset the authorities. The poem was sold on the street to sympathetic crowds, proving that he had a larger congregation than those who sought to silence him.

John Bunyan, despatched to Bedford prison for preaching without a licence, might also now be consulting his publishers and lawyers to see whether or not he was in danger of committing a criminal offence by publishing Grace Abounding. And as for Oscar Wilde and Jean Genet and Tobias Smollett, would the possibility of facing further punishment for going into print about their experiences stay their hands? Should the Home Office start chasing down the royalties from The Ballad of Reading Gaol?

While it is understandable that there is dismay and disgust that the perpetrator of a horrible crime might later seek to profit from it in print, there is a greater danger in embarking on an exercise that seems to have more to do with playing to the gallery than tackling a pressing public concern. Punishing people who have already been punished once, this time for writing what may offend, is a slope every bit as slippery as some of the characters who are currently profiting from the genre.

The latest proposals appear to be driven by a desire to stop crime being glamourised - always, as Defoe notes above, a fairly vain hope. Charles Dickens was criticised by contemporaries for making the world of Oliver Twist seem too appealing. (Nowadays, of course, Oliver and his chums would all have been served with Asbos - the problem of pickpocketing happily solved.)

There are many good arguments for allowing people convicted of crimes to write about their experiences, both in terms of literary value and so that we learn something. Great train robber Bruce Reynolds' Autobiography of a Thief, the title of which was chosen as a homage to Genet, is a fascinating account of why and how he did what he did. In it, we discover that Reynolds, as a young man, went into the offices of the Daily Mail and told the hall porter, "I want to be a reporter." He was given a job as a messenger boy. If only the Mail had shown a tiny bit of imagination and spotted his literary ability, who knows what might have happened?

Jimmy Boyle, who wrote about his life in the Glasgow gangs and its consequences in A Sense of Freedom, not only gave us a fine book but also told us much about the criminal justice system. He ended it thus: "I dread the thought of other kids going through my experience in order to gain the insight I have now. Perhaps this [book] could be used as a short cut."

Of all the criminal memoirs that would now come under scrutiny, there are few that do not deliver what might be classified as the Dreadful Warning, even if they don't exactly scale the heights of Bunyan and Defoe. Here's police informer Maurice O'Mahoney on some of the minor downsides of crime in his King Squealer: "Three swarthy men held my arms over a small wall adjacent to Kensal Green swimming baths while another repeatedly crashed a pickaxe handle down on my wrists." And his conclusion: "The British police have taught me a hell of a lot and now I am on their side all the way."

Here's the late Reg Kray in Born Fighter: "Don't take drugs. They only lead to peril. You don't need them. You should go through life with the personality God gave you." And Freddie Foreman in his autobiography, Respect, with his advice to those still in jail: "Get fit. Read everything you can, and try and educate yourself towards a better life."

And shouldn't that be what the Home Office is encouraging the residents of our bulging jails to do? Wouldn't they rather the prisoners were writing than rioting, using a pen instead of a knife? For, despite all protestations to the contrary, if these proposals are pushed through, they will have a chilling effect on the publishing world when it comes to dealing with anyone with a criminal conviction.

If there is still a concern that there are too many self-serving books published which seek to justify unforgivable behaviour, a far simpler solution is at hand: ban all political memoirs.