It is society’s job to speak up for crime victims. When we fail to do that, justice is failed

THE brutal murder of a vulnerable man by a gang including Georgina Smith horrified Scotland. Scott Blackwood was beaten, stabbed, stamped on, strangled and tied to a bath before an attempt was made to set him on fire.

Smith – along with two male accomplices – unleashed a torrent of violence on the man, despite claiming to be Mr Blackwood’s friends.

The men were found guilty of murder, sentenced to life, and ordered to spend at least 20 years in jail.

Smith received the lesser charge of culpable homicide and was jailed for 12 years – it seemed the very least she deserved.

The court heard that Smith was shouting ‘finish him, finish him’ as Mr Blackwood, 30, was violently beaten. A witness said he saw her pouring turpentine on him and trying to set him alight.

Mr Blackwood suffered 72 separate injuries including scalds and chemical burns. He had 13 stab wounds, three broken ribs, a smashed eye socket and cheekbones and he was strangled.

A pathologist said such head injuries were more usually encountered in car crash victims.

Given the horrific extent of those injuries, most people might have expected Smith would at least spend her 12-year sentence in jail.

Yet today, just five years on, we learn that Smith – and seven other women, all also guilty of serious crimes – are not actually in prison at all.

Their crimes range from murder to fire raising, assault, serious injury and misuse of drugs. These are serious offences and must be treated as such by the courts and prison system.

BUT as The Scottish Mail on Sunday reports today, they, and Smith, are now living in houses outside Cornton Vale, previously used by prison staff, where they can come and go generally as they please. They can get the bus into Stirling town centre, go to the shops and perform unpaid work.

They are, in other words, living the kind of normal lives that people up and down Scotland live day in, day out – with the exception that the Scottish Prison Service is picking up the cost of their rent.

It cannot in any way be deemed a punishment. Nor, given the appalling nature of Smith’s crime, can it be seen as justice.

People are entirely justified in asking what on earth is going on.

This is, of course, a sensitive and difficult issue.

Last week, Karyn McCluskey, head of the government agency Community Justice Scotland, said that most women who end up behind bars would be better off being cared for outside prison.

‘They are some of the most damaged people. They have had a lifetime of trauma’, she said, referring to the female offenders she dealt with.

‘You have to jail those you are afraid of – and not those you are mad at.’

She argues that most female offenders should be given care packages rather than prison sensage tences. So what is the right balance?

Of course we need judges to be alive to the differing circumstances of many women, the often very different nature of the crimes committed by women and the wider impact that their imprisonment has on their families and on society at large.

We need to get better at tackling the social problems experienced by many of the women who fall into crime.

Rehabilitation services, both inside and outside prison, must be improved.

And we should adopt a sensible approach so women who have committed minor crimes are not locked up. As Dame Eilish Angiolini, the former Lord Advocate, has said, locking up women who suffer from addiction or mental health problems has a ‘significant cost to society’.

We should therefore be intelligent in the way we manage such offenders. But that cannot get in the way of justice. Crimes are crimes. Justice should be dispassionate and objective.

So when somebody commits an appalling crime such as that which ended the life of Scott Blackwood, the fact that the killer was a woman should not be a determining factor in deciding what we should do to punish them. I cannot believe there are many people who consider the punishment given to Smith was sufficient, given the nature of her crime.

Nor do I think most people believe she should be punished less severely because of her sex. Doing so would fail to send the right message to society at large.

It would risk further eroding confidence in our justice system and that must not be allowed to continue.

So while the Scottish Government must do more to support the rehabilitation of offenders in order to break the cycle of crime, that has to be in addition to custodial sentences, not an alternative.

From the courtroom to parliament, we need to send a clear mes- that society will not tolerate crime, and particularly not the sort of horrific crime committed by Smith.

That message, I fear, is simply missing in modern-day Scotland.

Smith’s case is not a one-off. Rather it is symbolic of something far wider – a soft-touch approach to justice that suggests the SNP is simply not taking crime seriously.

Take the last week, for example. On Wednesday, I called a debate with a simple proposition: the Scottish Conservatives urged parliament to support heavier fixed penalty notices for anti-social behaviour.

We proposed that fines for antisocial behaviour, currently a flat £50, should be doubled for more serious instances of such behaviour, to £100.

Yet the SNP opposed our plan and voted against it, which means the maximum penalty will remain at £50.

ON Thursday, at First Minister’s Questions, I raised the appalling case of Christopher Daniel, the teenager who was found guilty of a series of sexual attacks on a girl aged between six and eight, but who was granted an absolute discharge by a sheriff on the grounds that he was emotionally ‘naive’.

And these cases follow in the wake of a growing sense of unease over the rapid extension of community sentencing in Scotland, the lax approach to electronic monitoring of criminals, the complete lack of transparency around parole and early release and the intention to do away with prison sentences of 12 months or less.

Time and time again, I hear it from people contacting me: it is as if the justice system has ears only for the needs of offenders, and has no consideration whatsoever for victims and their families.

People tell me they are often seen as afterthoughts. Rarely does it seem that their views are taken into account. It is a disgrace.

So while we must hear the wise words of Karyn McCluskey and other experts on the need to consider the complex needs of people in the criminal justice system, my plea is that we find room also for the needs of those on the receiving end of crime who currently feel shut out and excluded.

Too many people in the justice system appear to see these people as an unhelpful distraction from their main job. That needs to change.

Unfortunately, Scott Blackwood no longer has a voice.

That was taken from him by his so-called friends when he died at their hands. It is society’s job to speak for him by punishing his killers.

When we fail to do that – and, in this case, we have – it is justice itself that is failed.