CRIME AND PUNISHMENT

Scottish penal policy is in crisis. Our prison population per head of
population is the second highest in Europe, 15 per cent higher than in
England and Wales; 70 per cent of the prisoners remanded in custody
awaiting trial or sentence do not receive custodial sentences; the suicide
toll among prisoners is a national disgrace.

The appalling toll among young female prisoners at Cornton Vale has already
provoked outrage, but as 'The Scotsman' has reported, the flaws in the
regime at that prison are not unique and the suicide problem is not
isolated on one site. This week, the Chief Inspector of Prisons, Clive
Fairweather, made the grim observation that the situation in Greenock jail
is so desperate that "they might as well install an undertaker's office in
A Hall."

That might treat the symptom but it would do nothing to rectify the
problems which have seen 12 young men take their lives in three years at
Greenock, eight suicides in two years at Barlinnie, four at Longriggend
young offenders institute and three each at Aberdeen and Perth jails.

This is a disgrace which demands root and branch reform. Suicide watch
regimes can be improved and they should be. Liaison between prisons,
police, doctors and social workers can be tightened. Prison regimes can be
improved and the horrible problems created by the imprisonment of disturbed
young drug addicts can be addressed both before and after they are
incarcerated. But the problems are strategic not tactical and they demand a
strategic response.

Too many Scots go to prison when it will do neither them nor the
law-abiding population any good at all. Sentencing in sheriff courts and in
the High Court has lost any clear sense of purpose and is poles apart from
the ideology articulated but not enforced by our home affairs minister.

The semi-mystical procedure whereby judicial appointments emerge following
recommendation by the Lord Advocate to the Secretary of State has long
outgrown its usefulness if it ever had any purpose other than to maintain
the interests of one of the most closed establishments in Britain.

There is a crying need for an independent judicial appointments commission
on which should be represented people who have never had any connection
with the legal profession. Only by opening up the system by which sheriffs
and judges are appointed can we begin to ensure that sentencing serves
defined social purposes.

Then we must decide what those purposes are. Do we imprison offenders as
punishment or in order to punish them? Is a custodial sentence an end in
itself or a route to rehabilitation and reform? If imprisonment is more
likely to create recidivism than to turn out chastened and repsonsible
citizens, then what purpose is it serving?

Despite the minister's reforming rhetoric huge numbers of offenders are
entering our prisons frightened and vulnerable and emerging brutalised and
ready to offend again.

There is a need for political leadership here. Harsh sentencing may be
popular. Few politicians have ever profited by advocating leniency for
criminals (except if they are convicted in foreign courts) but the populist
mood may be seriously ill-informed.

Where is the evidence that mass imprisonment reduces crime or benifits
society? Beyond the need to protect the innocent from violent offenders,
what are the demonstrable benifits of incarceration?

Before we lock thousands more into tiny cells for 23 hours a day and
deprive them of basic sanitation, ministers must sponsor a national debate
on whether this is really the most effective or pragmatic solution.

Checked-by: (Joel W. Johnson)