At last, we have some idea of what the Ministry of Justice is planning to do during the coming months. It was one of the first departments to publish its so-called structural reform plan, setting out how it will implement the coalition agreement.

We can gloss over the rhetoric about ‘taking power away from Whitehall and putting it into the hands of people and communities’, about scrapping top-down micromanagement and ensuring that professionals answer to the public. All you need to know about these plans is that they replace targets with timetables.

So, for example, we are told that the review of legal aid announced last month will end in the autumn. At that point, the government will launch a public consultation, to be completed in ‘winter 2010/11’.

Contrast that reasonably tight timetable with the establishment of a ‘commission to investigate the creation of a UK Bill of Rights’. This will be set up some time before the end of 2011 and is the only proposal in the ministry’s list without a specified end date, making it a very low priority for the government.

There is a detailed programme of court reforms, though not all of it is easy to follow. We know that the consultation on court closures will end in September. We know that the Courts Service is to merge with the Tribunals Service next April.

But what’s all this about reforms between now and December that will ‘implement measures to increase court utilisation and work with criminal justice partners to eradicate waste and inefficiency’? How do they tie in with plans, between September and next April, that will ‘develop options for using technology and alternative dispute resolution to reduce attendance at all courts’? Or the overlapping proposals, ending in January, ‘for court reform and modernisation to improve accessibility to justice and efficiency’? It all sounds like cuts to me.

The section on civil liberties is more specific – although equally mysterious. One aim, to be completed by the end of next week, is to ‘develop a mechanism to prevent unnecessary criminal offences’. This is presumably the government’s ‘your freedom’ website, which allows anyone to nominate laws for repeal. And the website also supports the government’s planned Freedom Bill, which is to be passed by the end of the current parliamentary session in November next year.

If we are to abolish unnecessary laws, how does the government explain another of the reforms it wants in force by December? This will ‘develop options, working with the Home Office, to provide people with greater protection to prevent crime and apprehend criminals, including to defend themselves against intruders’.

The reference to the Home Office in this clumsy sentence suggests more police officers patrolling the streets and arresting criminals – or perhaps grants for better locks on doors and windows.

Some hope. If the Ministry of Justice is involved, it can only be because someone thinks the law on self-defence needs tightening. Take it from me: it does not. Section 76 of the Criminal Justice and Immigration Act 2008 was Labour’s answer to those who regard burglars as outlaws; but even that legislation was not intended to do more than restate the existing law.

Rather more worthy of reform is the law of libel. Options will be developed between now and next March, when the government promises to publish a draft bill for pre-legislative scrutiny. Whether a bill to protect freedom of speech will become law in 2012 remains to be seen.

However, sentencing and its consequences remain the government’s highest priority. Following the current sentencing review, Ken Clarke will publish a green paper in November on reducing reoffending and improving rehabilitation. But it will be another year before the responses to his proposals are worked up into a bill, which means reforms are unlikely to take effect until 2013.

Next June, though, the justice secretary will implement the Prisoners Earnings Act 1996, passed when the Conservatives were last in power and mothballed under Labour. This, we are promised, ‘would allow prison governors to deduct from prisoners’ earnings and transfer money into the victims’ fund’. But a glance at the legislation shows that it applies only to higher-paid work, not the normal labour that a prisoner is directed to do. The prisoner’s earnings must exceed a prescribed sum and only a percentage of this excess will go to help victims. There cannot be many prisoners earning enough to make the scheme worthwhile.

Rather more intriguing are the government’s plans for pay-by-results rehabilitation. It will ‘launch and evaluate a pilot rehabilitation scheme, funded by a social impact bond, to reduce reoffending by paying private-sector and third-sector providers by results’. This will continue until the end of 2012.

A social impact bond is a contract between a public-sector body and investors in which the latter are rewarded in line with a project’s success. It turns out that the first such contract was signed by the Ministry of Justice in March, while Labour was still in power. This provides for specialist organisations to support up to 3,000 short-term prisoners in Peterborough, training inmates to help fellow prisoners. Investors will receive a return only if reoffending drops by 7.5%, which seems fair enough.

Despite that, there is one pledge that dare not speak its name. Though reform of the prison estate is a priority, and there are several references to prison capacity, there is no deadline – or even a commitment – to reduce the number of serving prisoners. If there had been, I think we might have heard rather more about this mixed bag of plans.