IT DOESN’T TAKE SHERLOCK HOLMES TO DEDUCE WHAT’S BEHIND SNP PLAN

SCOTLAND’S justice system is facing a watershed moment because of two key SNP policies that are about to be implemented. People already feel this Government’s soft-touch justice prioritises criminals above victims, but the changes the SNP is about to push through arguably have the most far-reaching consequences.

This week the Scottish parliament will almost certainly ratify the SNP’s Management of Offenders (Scotland) Bill, a piece of legislation intended to massively increase the number of criminals

on electronic tags. And despite consistent opposition from the Scottish Conservatives, the Scottish parliament will likely nod through the SNP’s presumption against prison sentences of less than 12 months.

The nature and pace of these changes for the Scottish justice system, criminals and victims will be significant.

Firstly, the Management of Offenders (Scotland) Bill will expand and streamline the electronic tagging system.

It will enable the use of new technologies in order to monitor offenders’ movements and the enforcement of exclusion zones, for example, around victims’ homes.

In principle, there is nothing fundamentally wrong with tagging when it is appropriate and the use of exclusion zones is to be welcomed.

While decisions about which sentence to hand down remain the responsibility of courts and parole boards, the SNP has suggested that this legislation will ensure the use of tagging will increase – which means more criminals in our communities and fewer in prison.

Of course, that is appropriate if both systems are functioning properly and the appropriate checks and balances are in place.

But we now know that the SNP has made a £42 million investment in the tagging system in the form of a contract for the provision of electronic tagging services.

This is in the context of a Scottish Prison Service which has been starved of investment by the SNP and in which prison officers have consistently voiced concerns about coping with too few staff while levels of violence and illegal drugs in our jails are increasing.

So the SNP’s £42 million commitment to tagging speaks volumes.

It doesn’t take Sherlock Holmes to work out that they would rather invest in keeping criminals in our communities and out of the prison estate than investing in, for example, prison officers.

No one is denying our prison population is too high.

But you don’t reduce it by putting the public at risk as an alternative.

This leads to my other key concern. We have to ensure that before we put more criminals on the streets on tags, the safety checks are in place.

People would think it would automatically be a criminal offence if an offender tampers with or cuts off the tag. But it is not.

That is why at every stage of this Bill’s progress, I have tried to ensure this basic crucial protection – and will do so again this week.

Because failing to make cutting off a tag an offence removes a substantial deterrent to those wishing to elude monitoring, but it also means that the police do not immediately have the powers to apprehend the individual. This gives the offender time to commit more crimes and hurt more people before they are caught once again. The risk inherent in this crucial delay, particularly to victims of domestic abuse, is obvious.

We are not alone in our criticism, nor our concern.

Scottish Women’s Aid submitted evidence on this Bill, in which they said clearly: ‘To be a credible deterrent, breach of the electronic monitoring conditions must be an automatic criminal offence.’

That would include tampering with tags or indeed infringing an exclusion zone.

Victim Support Scotland made similar calls and linked the requirement for a proposed automatic offence to the need for victims and the community’s trust in the system to be maintained.

But they also went further and stated that already ‘communities have no faith in community sentencing’, by reason that it takes too long for someone to be found to be in breach of their order and it takes multiple infringements before anything is done

When they said there is ‘zero supervision’ of offenders wearing tags in the community, alarm bells should surely have been ringing.

On which note, even Community Justice Scotland has suggested that only one-third of sheriffs monitor breaches of electronic monitoring sufficiently. This is worrying enough, but let’s now take a look at the SNP’s presumption against short prison sentences of 12 months or less.

Last year, nearly 10,000 criminals were given a sentence of less than a year. With a new ‘presumption’ against those people going to prison, they could all be diverted to a community sentence.

As with the electronic tagging bill, this is the thin end of the wedge, designed to empty our prisons and keep offenders in the community.

I fear the consequences of such a blunt instrument have not been thought through.

Lawyers have pointed out that since an early guilty plea can lead to a sentence being reduced by a third, a conviction which should attract an 18-month jail term could be cut by an early guilty plea to 12 months. With the presumption, that means an offence serious enough to merit 18 months in prison could result in the criminal being sentenced only to a community order.

So again, according to lawyers, this means rapists, domestic abusers, child pornographers and those who have attacked emergency workers and police officers could receive community sentences.

Ask what message that sends to victims. And this is a community justice system already struggling.

The latest statistics show almost a third of community sentences aren’t completed. Where is the basic justice for victims?

It is clear that a system which sends criminals straight back into the communities in which they have offended fails victims of their crimes – the elderly person who woke to find someone in their home, the domestic abuse victim who finally felt able to tell the police, the girl who suffered a sexual assault who has to see her attacker on the way to the shops.

The SNP’s soft-touch justice not only puts the public at increased risk but could undermine our justice system, remove deterrents and deny victims the justice they deserve.

Let me be very clear about this: when other parties will not stand up to protect the people of Scotland, the Scottish Conservatives always will.

You don’t reduce prison population by putting the public at risk