15% fewer offenders sent to prison thanks to SNP’s soft justice

THE number of criminals being sent to prison has plunged by 15 per cent in just under a decade.

Official figures have laid bare the impact of ‘soft touch’ policies such as attempting to phase out shorter jail terms.

A total of 17,294 were imprisoned for all or part of 2019-20 – a fall of 15 per cent from 20,407 in 2010-11.

Over the same period, the proportion leaving jail after three months or less fell from 70 per cent to 58 per cent.

Last night Scottish Tory justice spokesman Liam Kerr said: ‘This significant reduction in the number of people being sent to jail has serious implications for our community justice system.

‘Currently this system is wholly overloaded, with few offenders undertaking their community work orders quickly enough or having a work element. This all suggests the soft touch justice approach is allowing many criminals to avoid jail and avoid punishment.’

Ministers introduced a presumption against jail terms of up to three months in 2011, extended to 12 months last year. The aim was to focus on community punishment, with more ‘diverted’ from custody – a move which critics said would jeopardise public safety.

The Scottish Government figures show that despite the fall in the number of people being sent to prison, the country’s jail population has soared by almost 10 per cent in the past two years.

This is partially due to offenders serving longer sentences and not being given parole.

Convicts are spending longer behind bars than at any point in the past decade, causing the average number of inmates to increase. The number of prisoners on an average day in 2019-20 was 8,195, an increase of 731 since 2017-18.

While the chief statistician’s report says there could be numerous causes for the rise in prison population, it highlights the ‘substantially reduced’ use of home detention curfew – early release with an electronic tag – for shortlast term prisoners from 2018. It also cites an Audit Scotland report warning financial restrictions on rehabilitation programmes and staff are ‘preventing prisoners from qualifying for release on parole’.

Men make up approximately 16,000 of the 17,294 jailed in the year and the report states those from the most deprived areas are three times more likely to be imprisoned.

The proportion of new prisoners who are homeless has increased in a decade from 4.4 per cent to 7.5 per cent and the proportion of inmates aged 55 or over has more than doubled from 3.3 per cent to 7 per cent.

Last year, a survey by the Scottish Sentencing Council found that 56 per cent of 1,000 respondents felt ‘sentencing in general was too lenient’.

Justice Secretary Humza Yousaf expressed concern at the ‘large proportion’ still given short prison sentences.

He said: ‘While such decisions are made based on the facts and circumstances before the sheriff or judge, we know that people released from a short prison sentence of 12 months or less are reconvicted nearly twice as often as those sentenced to serve community payback orders.’

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