CRAZY SENTENCES SHOW JUSTICE HAS GONE TO POT

AS a small nation on a mission to develop and compete in an
increasingly complex international environment, it's vital that we
waste as many of our resources as possible. That is one message you
could take from a recent court case.

Stuart Duncan bought a cannabis farm kit over the internet. As you
might expect from the productive efforts of someone who thought buying
a cannabis farm kit over the internet was a sound investment, he
failed to produce anything other than one sickly plant. His lawyer
described the attempt as "virtually useless".

And now Stuart Duncan is going to be sent to a prison. A prison where
he will need to be fed, watered, cared for and guarded in an
extraordinary use of resources that seems to scream that we have
nothing better to do with taxpayers' money.

Before I heard of this case, I was under the impression that our
prisons were rather full already. I was under the impression from
other sentences that a prison sentence was something that should be
avoided at all costs, even when demonstrable physical harm has been
visited upon innocent people.

The other week a former nurse who injected a four-month-old girl with
a potentially fatal dose of insulin was spared a prison term when her
case came before the High Court in Edinburgh. Earlier this year, a
Muirhouse chap who shot a heavily pregnant woman with his airgun was
placed on probation.

The distinction between these crimes and the dopey dope farmer is that
one can identify clear victims who sustained real injury. Who has been
harmed by Stuart Duncan's crime? The principle victim appears to
himself, unless one considers being outed nationally by your own
lawyer as an incompetent buffoon some form of career goal.

I do understand that a crime has been committed, and that drugs are a
serious problem. I do know that breaking the law is, er, illegal and
should be discouraged. Just to be completely clear, I also understand
that if everyone went around just breaking the law then the world
would be a worse place. I just don't understand what a jail sentence
for this guy is going to achieve, specifically when compared to the
lack of a jail term in the other cases mentioned.

It's not like there are not worthwhile alternatives. The guy who took
pot-shots at the pregnant woman got community service. Many people
think that this is not punishment. Part of the problem is that
community service sounds friendly; if we were told that the sentence
was not community service but "cleaning public toilet U-bends", then
at least some people might be willing to acknowledge this is both of
service to the community and punishment. So why don't they tell us
these things? In other countries - notably the United States - it is
common for community service sentences to have the service components
notified to the community in question.

More importantly, why can't we choose what service to the community is
provided by the convicted criminals? After all, we are the community
and we should surely know better than anyone else what it is we want
done. Here is a prediction - we would have cleaner streets, cleaner
public toilets and less graffiti.

Not only would ordinary taxpayers be able to see criminals working for
their salvation, we would also be able to enjoy the benefits.
Potential criminals might also be deterred from seeing the very public
role they might be required to perform, particularly if they are
imaginative enough to think what condition the average public toilet
U-bend might be in.

Perhaps most importantly of all, we would have emptier prisons and
emptier prisons mean cheaper prisons. For once everyone was able to
see the full range of beneficial effects from a genuinely democratic
form of community service, there would be substantially less
opposition to such sentences. So as I asked in the first place, why is
this guy going to prison?