SCOTLAND'S prison population should be cut from 7700 to 5000, with jail sentences reserved only for the most serious and dangerous offenders, an independent report recommended today.
The Scottish Prison Commission, led by former First Minister Henry McLeish, said imprisonment should be targeted and "paying back" in the community should become the default position for dealing with less serious offenders.
The report also argued
for 16 and 17-year-old offenders to be dealt with at specialist youth hearings and detained separately from adult offenders.
And it recommended new "conditional" sentences – between a community sentence and a custodial sentence – where a jail term was imposed but suspended, subject to the offender keeping to strict conditions which include tagging, unpaid community work and payment of fines.
The report said: "The evidence that we have reviewed leads us to the conclusion that to use imprisonment wisely is to target it where it can be most effective – in punishing serious crime and protecting the public.
"Imprisonment should be reserved for people whose offences are so serious that no other form of punishment will do and for those who pose a threat of serious harm to the public."
And it said focusing the use of imprisonment on those who had committed serious crimes and were a danger to the public, it would be possible to reverse the upward trend in the prison population, projected to rise to 8500 within a decade.
The report said: "The commission recommends that the Government pursue a target of reducing the prison population to an average daily population of 5000."
It said the Government should extend the types and availability of effective alternatives to prosecution.
And it recommended a single community supervision sentence with a wide range of possible conditions and measures for paying back the community for crimes committed.
The commission also proposed two new bodies – an independent National Sentencing Council to develop clear sentencing guidelines and improve consistency; and a National Community Justice Council to oversee a new regime of community sentences.
Mr McLeish said Scotland was at a crossroads and must choose which future it wanted for its criminal justice system.
He said: "Scotland has one possible future where its prisons hold only serious offenders, prison staff regularly and expertly deliver programmes that can affect change and there is a widely used and respected system of community-based sentences.
"There is another possible future, one in which there are many more prisons, as overcrowded as those today. Dedicated and skilled professionals lack support and suffer from low morale, the public's distrust of the criminal justice system reaches record levels and fragile communities are ignored.
"We have to make a choice between these two futures. One requires us to do nothing at all; the other will require us to think differently about what we want punishment to do."
The full article contains 479 words and appears in Edinburgh Evening News newspaper.
