Scotland is about to get rid of prison for most crime and I am scared about the consequences

[CurdinHenry]

The purpose is to save money because they can't afford to divert cash to build new prisons.

They've found a couple of studies (interviews with 5 individual subjects) they claim support "restorative justice" instead.

This means no prison for most crimes (including if you sack off your community service for the crime). It means shoplifting, mugging, most violent and sexual offences will not result in prison so the only thing stopping the criminal is the social penalty they can expect or their own moral compass.

Punch a nurse, spit on a bus driver, steal a school kid's iPhone at knifepoint all on the same day. No prison.

I know you're probably thinking this is an exaggeration of the policy and I can understand why because it seems too absurd and mad. But it's happening later this year.

(Peter Murrell got 5 years 3 months so they probably think they've dodged that embarrassing parallel but some of their sex offenders got less than that - Jordan Linden etc).

It’s just a consultation at this stage.

It would need to be backed by parliament before implementation

its based on more than 5 case studies

I’m no fan of the Scottish Government but it’s a bit more nuanced than your OP suggests

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c872yr4r12ro?app-referrer=search

Well locking people up for petty crime doesnt work either as a deterrent or as rehabilitation so maybe some sort of rethink is needed?

I am sorry do you think there is genuinely evidence that society benefits from a standard policy of no prison for attempted rape, knife crime, violent theft? The evidence is literally anecdotal and anonymous, collected by campaigners with extreme bias.

The Greens are prison abolitionists so this will absolutely pass. I assume you must live somewhere fairly remote and don't worry about being marched to an ATM to empty your bank account but burglaries are about to be decriminalised too.

Most crimes is caused by the same small number of people. Keeping them in prison stops other crimes from happening for the duration of their sentence. And can give victims some sense of justice.

It is not the punishment, it is the certainty of being punished that deters.

I am not necessarily convinced that rehabilitation is possible without the individual wanting to be rehabilitated in the first place.

Stops them mugging, shoplifting and burglary etc, while they are in prison!
Small number of shoplifters in my small village and when he went to prison shoplifting more than halved.
The doors stopped being tried, which at 11pm is unnerving!
If you are happy having half your alcohol stock stolen every day as a small shop holder crack on.

Ask any teacher how "restorative justice" has worked as a tool for discipline in schools....

... it hasnt

I don't think non-violent/sexual criminals should be in jail - it's a waste of time. OK it might reduce that person from shoplifting for the month they are inside, but it doesn't achieve anything from a general policy perspective. There are a lot of bright people working in policy work and they should be able to come up with more creative punishments for non-violent criminals.

Surely sexual assault IS a violent crime???

Scotland is insane to even think about trying this. Criminals belong in prison. Whilst they are there they cannot commit crimes at least not against the general law-abiding population.

👏🏻

I am in favor of overhauling the prison system to generally avoid prison for non-violent crimes. The first layer of punishment should be community service, coursework, and therapy. If well administered, this wouldn’t necessarily be significantly cheaper, but it would be more effective.

I would simultaneously increase prison time for violent crimes, particularly sexual assault. Things like rape while using a weapon should mean a life sentence.

But we dont keep them in prison. They do a few weeks, then they come out and commit dozens more crimes. Eventually they are caught and do a few more weeks then rinse and repeat.

If there are options which are more successful at reforming non-violent criminals (and there are) why wouldn't you want to try them?

Just keep them locked up. No rehabilitation, throw them in a cell, lock it, and don't unlock it again until they have died. Far more effective and cheaper than spending endless amounts of money and wasting everyone's time with "rehabilitation".

Over 15 years of help the young man in our village got, never engaged with any help given didn’t give a shit. How do you help someone like that? He stole thousands from his grandfathers life savings by transferring to his bank account. Changed all of the alerts to his email and phone number!
But he’s dead now of a drugs overdose and the family tried to start a collection to pay for his funeral. No one helped, but the grandfather who he had stolen from. Very sad what a wasted life!

Ponderingwindow · Today 17:05
I am in favor of overhauling the prison system to generally avoid prison for non-violent crimes

Even for cases of serious fraud, money laundering, tax evasion etc?

There always seems to be a demand to have the newest and allegedly most effective drugs rolled out to treat disease

So why not the same with offenders?

In some cases Crime Prevention has been very successful eg Scottish Violence Reduction Unit and there is a lot of talk about the school to prison conveyer belt but little action to stop it.

There are some serious questions about what we do with those who are either very likley to reoffend in particular if it involves violence or organised crime. I suggest that we need to look at the Netherlands with their use of secure hospitals for more serious offenders and longer and more comprehensive periods of post release supervision.

Given Scotlands problems with organised crime one obvious question is where can the law and resources applied to make these offences less lucrative and how can the perpetrators be prevented from reoffending - and yes that may mean whole life sentences.

The problem with prison has always been that it just effectively stops time for the inmate. When they come out, if it was for a short period, What's changed?
History is littered with recidivists. People who, like the fictional Norman Stanley Fletcher, see prison as an occupational hazard. I watched something recently about the Hatton Garden thieves - six pensioners who had been in and out of prison most of their lives. They interviewed one of the survivors who basically said he'd starting stealing off bomb sites after the war when he was 11. Prison did nothing to stop his behaviour, even though it certainly wasn't the fabled 'holiday camp' in the 50s and 60s.

It doesn't work because it does nothing to address the world the criminal will be going back into. It doesn't magically change their circumstances, in fact it becomes harder to earn an honest living once you have been inside. Your old mates who didn't get caught are waiting for you with all the old temptations.

That said, you can't just cut prison with nothing else in place. But it does need rethinking. Why do people reoffend? It isn't just 'soft prisons', if it was, the toughest prisons in the world would be empty.

100% all of this. And for a violent rape the life sentence must have no possibility of parole

I also think whole-life tariff without parole for even minor sex crimes against children. The risk of reoffending is too high.

However I generally think there should be very few crimes that carry prison time

I think restorative justice is mostly bullshit. Can work in some verespecific cases with very specific personality types

Some people just can't cope with having to go out to work to earn a living. So they turn to crime which they find easier. I don't see any solution besides prison.

Aren’t those exactly the kind of crimes where there should be a better alternative to prison? Prison should be for containing criminals who present a physical risk to the public.

With the white collar crimes you mention I can see the possibility for consequences like seizure of all assets, lifetime or time-limited bans on owning businesses or certain kind of assets, ban on investments, lifelong repayment plans and so on.

But prison isn't actually solving that problem, though. People don't come out magically being able to cope with going out to work and earning a living. Short term it solves the immediate problem by getting individuals off the streets. But if they are just going to be returned to those same streets two years later, it's just kicking the can down the road. And often they come out having learned off the more seasoned criminals how to be better at it.

There are better ideas, but they cost time and money, and since this proposal is about saving money, I doubt they will be making any really effective changes. I fear that, whilst the attitude is, 'we need to save money', reducing prison sentences will be disastrous.

Changing the penalty system is a long game that involves looking at systemic reasons for crime hot spots, identifying demographics where the 'can't cope with work' mentality is more prevalent, and asking why.

We don't do these things, and we are no different to other nations in this respect. It's short term thinking, treating symptoms, not causes. Prison might not be cheap, but it IS easy. We'll go round in circles and people will come to the obvious conclusion that prison is the answer when things get worse, because there's still no attempt to cure the actual disease.

Castrate persistent offenders - !t works with cats

I think this is crazy. Being burgled can really affect someone, just because it has become common doesn’t make it right. If someone is sent to prison for burglary it stops them doing it while they are in prison so the victim can live easier.
I don’t think it matters whether or not prison is a deterrent, what matters is preventing criminals and anti-social people from making other people’s lives a misery.
Yes ideally prison would fix them but in the absence of that at least it gives the local community a breather.

Scotland is insane...
Tbf you could have just stopped there.
I say this as a Scot btw. This is just the latest in a long line of absolute nonsense Scotgov have come out with in recent years.