McLeish Calls For An End To Short Jail Sentences
An end to almost all short jail terms was signalled yesterday under radical plans from the Scottish Government’s Prison’s Commission. Instead, offenders would face a simplified, toughened community sentence.
The commission members said community sentences must be tougher than jail, and must start on the day of the conviction, as prison terms do.
A wide range of sometimes radical reform for Scottish criminal justice could see at least one-third fewer prisoners within 10 years, according to Henry McLeish, the former First Minister who led the review.
Whereas prisoner numbers have been hitting record levels – on average 7200 last year and set to spiral higher – the Scottish Prisons Commission wants to see that number drop to 5000. It warned jail does not tackle the high incidence of reoffending, but instead creates the conditions to worsen it.
The commission was set up last year by Justice Secretary Kenny MacAskill, and asked to lead the public debate on Scotland’s relatively high and rising prison population, with overcrowding reaching crisis point.
The publication of its report received cautious support from Mr MacAskill and sparked fierce controversy, as the SNP’s opponents attacked the “soft touch” approach to crime is “Scotland’s worst nightmare”.
The McLeish report set out a plan to end all prison sentences of less than six months, with a few exceptions. These include violent and sexual offences, which account for 2% of shorter jail terms.
To boost public and sentencers’ confidence in non-custodial options, it proposed a simplified Community Supervision Sentence, which could include a wide range of elements. It would be based around payback, meaning “constructive ways to compensate or repair harms caused by crime”. Examples of this working elsewhere were drawn from commissioner visits to New York and Liverpool.
The commission suggested sentencers should have the option of conditional sentences, suspended but requiring specific conditions to be met.
The McLeish committee reported the law passed at Holyrood last year to end automatic early release half way through sentences of less than four years is unworkable. The expansion of criminal justice social work is unfunded, and assessing all prisoners before release, as the Act requires, is “simply not practicable”. It is proposed, instead, the new Act should not apply to jail terms of less than two years.
As background to the challenge facing Scotland’s prisons, the report stated: “Our prisons are overcrowded and expanding. It is an option to be used only as a last resort.”
Mr MacAskill responded the government is already planning legislation for sharper, more focused community sentences. He said expanding prison capacity to meet demand is not an answer to growing prisoner numbers: “We can’t go on as we are, because if we do, our prisons are going to burst at the seams”.
Bill Aitken, Scottish Tory justice spokesman, said the report was “the tragic, final proof that we are living in the SNP’s soft touch Scotland”, asserting the SNP “thinks muggers, thieves and drug dealers should escape prison and be given community sentences”.
Labour’s Pauline McNeill said the proposal to cut prison numbers by more than a third was “an outrageous idea”.
LibDem Mike Pringle backed the commission’s call to end short prison sentences, saying rehabilitation and a fall in re-offending should be the focus.