Is life really this cheap? Killers get average of 5 years, 3 months
KILLERS are being handed the shortest jail sentences for a decade.
The average prison term for ‘homicide’ offences is now five years and three months, down from seven years and two months in 2007.
Soft-touch policies such as community service and controversial electronic tagging have slashed the prison population.
Meanwhile, Scottish Government figures yesterday showed the number of people convicted of sex crimes hit a record high last year.
Scottish Tory justice spokesman Douglas Ross said: ‘Our justice system should always be open to ideas on keeping the public safe and boosting rehabilitation.
‘One area where people expect there to be no wriggle room is when it comes to killers.
‘The SNP should reflect on these figures and reassess how it treats serious criminals and what impact its decisions have on victims and their families.’
The figures do not cover murder, which carries a mandatory life sentence but do include culpable homicide and such crimes as death by careless driving.
In 2014-15, the average jail sentence for homicide was five years and six months. Yesterday’s statistics, for 2015-16, show the average sentence is now only five years and three months.
Meanwhile, the number of people receiving Community Payback Orders (CPOs) – the SNP’s new community service orders – rose from 461 in 2010-11, when they were brought in, to 16,742.
Nineteen per cent of all convictions in 2015-16 resulted in community sentences, such as CPOs or tagging, a rise from 12 per cent in 2006-07. And nearly a tenth of community sentences were Restriction of Liberty Orders – electronic tags – with 1,646 handed out, a 40 per cent rise on 1,177 the year before.
Ministers are planning a further massive expansion of tagging, in spite of the clamour of fears for public safety.
Overall, prosecutions fell 5 per cent from 123,369 to 116,800, and convictions dropped 6 per cent from 106,622 to 99,950.
But the number of people convicted of sex crimes reached a record high, with 1,156 convic- tions in 2015-16, a rise of 53 percent from 756 in 2010-11. Experts say the long-term rise is down to an increase in prosecutions for possessing child abuse images, and the greater confidence of victims to report sex crimes.
A spokesman for children’s charity NSPCC Scotland said: ‘The five-year rise in the number of sex offence convictions in Scotland is worrying because it has been driven in part by an increase in offences involving indecent images of children.
‘Each of these images is a crime scene and a child has been abused to create them.’
Prison terms of up to three months made up 30 per cent of custodial sentences in 2015-16, despite a presumption against short periods of incarceration.
Meanwhile the number of people prosecuted under the controversial Offensive Behaviour at Football and Threatening Communications (Scotland) Act, which seeks to ban sectarian chanting at matches, almost doubled from 96 to 175 in 201516. But at the same time the conviction rate fell from 82 per cent to 75 per cent.
A total of 12,374 people were convicted of domestic abuse, compared to 8,566 in 2010-11 and a high of 12,440 in 2014-15.
Scottish Justice Secretary Michael Matheson said tackling abuse was a ‘key priority’.
He added: ‘I will shortly introduce to parliament legislation creating a new criminal offence of domestic abuse that will include psychological abuse, which can be difficult to deal with under existing laws.’