Prison sentences need to be tough
Society will always demand a causal relationship between crime and punishment
What is the point of sending people to prison? There are numerous reasons, but the broadbrush themes are: to act as a deterrent to others thinking of committing a similar crime; to punish the individuals concerned; and to take the opportunity to rehabilitate them to discourage reoffending.
The Scottish Government has now launched a 12-week consultation period to discuss the use of custodial sentences and a number of proposals for new legislation due to be laid before MSPS within the first parliamentary year.
These include requiring courts to consider electronic monitoring before bail is refused; increasing the power of ministers to release “groups of prisoners in exceptional circumstances”'; and providing greater support for offenders leaving prison.
It is fair to say this is politically controversial. Justice Secretary Keith Brown insisted that “we cannot simply keep using imprisonment to address wider societal harms. Indeed, in some cases such use can exacerbate the harm”, while Scottish Tory justice spokesman Jamie Greene accused the SNP of being “intent on letting rapists and killers back on our streets after serving only a small fraction of their sentence”.
But beneath the rhetoric there should surely be considerable agreement on the need to reduce crime and keep people safe. On its own, a prison sentence is a blunt tool that does little to address the reasons why someone committed a crime.
Twenty years ago, Norway moved away from a punitive ‘lock them up’ approach and introduced a more ‘progressive’ regime with inmate yoga classes and the like. The result was a sharp reduction in recidivism with about 20 per cent of prisoners reoffending within two years, one of the lowest rates in the world.
However, society will always demand a causal relationship between crime and punishment. If criminals are seen to get away with it or be let off with just a slap on the wrist, it will threaten the rule of law in more ways than one. It would encourage more crime but also, potentially, persuade some misguided souls to resort to vigilantism.
If the innocent are to be protected from the guilty, then the threat of prison, particularly for violent offenders, must remain a real one and this should not be undermined by any reforms, however well-meaning.