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).

Depends what else is going on. If it's an organised gang behind it, removing one or two perpetrators doesn't give anyone a breather, because there's always someone else willing to do it. And increasingly, crime is becoming less individual and opportunistic.

It absolutely does matter if prison isn't making a difference to the general problem. If your doctor kept chucking tablets at you that left you without pain for a day, but it returned the next day, and the gaps between pain got fewer and fewer, but he refused to look beyond solving the immediate problem of pain today, would you be happy with that?

People have to want to be rehabilitated for it to work. It's sad, but some people don't want to be helped for a variety of reasons, many of which are too complicated to fix. Keeping violent criminals and repeat offenders off the street is the only sure fix, at least for as long as they're locked up. Governments owe it to their people to keep them safe, and paying for a sufficient number of prison cells is part of that. It's expensive to house and feed prisoners, but simply refusing to fund the necessary prisons is not an acceptable solution.

Because it’s not punishment enough. Their victims don’t get all this fuss and attention and assistance . They shouldn’t either. Criminals don’t change. Just keep them away from the rest of us.

if I’m the victim I want to see some punishment, not just talking to stop them doing it again. The justice system isn’t just about rehabilitation, there does need to be some accountability for the victims. That might seem nasty but bloody hell non violent crime isn’t victimless. If for example you’ve been defrauded by someone you’ve trusted, that can have a life long impact on how you feel about people going forward, being unable to trust again, feeling unsafe etc. yes I don’t want them doing it to someone else in the future but I also want them punished for it, I’m not just up for forgiveness.

The problem I have with these kind of schemes is the alternative still needs investment and that generally doesn’t happen as the money isnt there. So no money to build more prisons and simultaneously no money to rehabilitate the drug addicts or fund community programs to support the youth offenders etc. It just ends up with lots of crime being decriminalised and the streets are more dangerous as a result.

Have a look at the Norwegian justice system. Seems to work for them.

I think there are some people who will not keep within the law. My ex dh has a relation like this. He is intelligent and went to Oxbridge and landed a good job but then stole substantial sums from the company to fund another business he started, planning - or so he said - to pay it back when the new business made money.
He was caught and went to jail but has had a further brush with the law since.
I don’t know why he is like this - I think some people are born without a moral compass or conscience and I don’t think there is anything that can be done to change them.

When I looked at the evidence base at the time ( albeit a long time ago), sentences under two years of length did not stop reoffending.

One of the problems with prison is that courses to work with prisoners, to help them address their offending behaviour and to help them be able to get skills to get employment after prison, have been cut. There is now very little rehabilitative work in prisons. This is a policy choice by governments, including the Scottish government. So they remove what could make prison work and then declare we don’t need prison as it doesn’t work.

The other things they suggest instead of prison won’t work either if they don’t help people to develop a life without crime. And pp said, that can only work if people want to change their life.

The one thing prison does do is make victims feel the crime against them was taken seriously by society.

I’d also add that the middle class people in Scottish government making these laws are the people least likely to be victims of crime. It seems a luxury belief to think prison isn’t needed when you don’t live in fear of crime. Yet again middle class perspectives and ‘lived experience’ make decisions that affect low income communities with completely different experiences.

A number of years ago Aberdeen was trialled by police Scotland that not all crimes would be looked at.
The upshot of that experiment was it was rolled out across Scotland.

You want to see the state of Aberdeen now and I daresay it's much and such across the whole of Scotland

It’s not always possible to transport things from one culture and expect it to work in a different culture. Besides, the Scottish government has a poor track record of importing things from one culture to Scotland. Gender ideology did not import well as our laws are different ( as well as being unpopular with the majority of Scots). The baby boxes in their origin country were designed as a lure to get people engaging with services so their needs could be identified and met. The SG just gave them away as a vote winning freebie. The origin country actually said they could not see the point of the baby boxes in the way Scotland implemented them.

@helpfulperson what are the similarities and differences between Norwegian and Scottish societies that make you believe the Norwegian system could work here?

@WilliamsandWatsonTooLateNSoul

why, what has happened in Aberdeen?

@CurdinHenry I'm not surprised you're worried - it's ridiculous

In terms of crimes like fraud and tax evasion, as well as barring them from financial stuff, surely these nonviolent criminals are prime candidates for tagging?

I don't really understand why it doesn't work that way first. Especially in England where they claim they've run out of room.

Anyone seen “Inside Barlinnie”? I would recommend if to anyone interested in this kind of thing.

Firstly, it nearly always comes down to drugs or alcohol - those prisoners who do well on release have accessed therapy and rehabilitation inside prison, and have also been supported on release. If you just release someone with nowhere to go, and no structure in place, they will most likely go on to reoffend. Money needs to be invested in services both inside and outside of prison

Secondly, not one of those people have come from happy and stable homes. Absent parents, abusive parents, care leavers, childhood trauma etc. If we want to stop the offending in the first place, we need to be getting to these families early doors.

Just locking people up in some kind of revolving door doesn’t work, you have to invest money to stop reoffending, in particular in drug rehab, but we don’t.

Iirc Union St has had 2000 incidents
Union Square is akin to the wild west
Little hoodlums on tour with their free bus passes.
Hardly a flat surface across the city that hasn't got some graffiti tag.
There are a few prominent ones that must run into thousands in criminal damage.
£375,000 in graffiti damage to Aberdeen parks over 5 years.

The St.Nicholas area of the city centre has street drinkers/drug users camped out sitting on the ledges below the cash machines outside virgin Money.
This can be as early as 8am.

Our city centre is a zoo.

@WilliamsandWatsonTooLateNSoul what a nightmare

I was just curious because I was chatting to someone on holiday who said to her son had just gone to Aberdeen for work. She had just come back from a visit and she was saying that she was delighted how lovely it was!

Maybe it's a bit like London - in certain situations you'll only see the nice bits.

Short prison sentences are awful for rehabilitation. Many people lose their job and accommodation and are released back into the community needing to sleep in a hostel and having to steal to live until they can get their lives back on track (which isn't easy in homeless accommodation). They have to go back to the same support network they had before who encouraged poor choices as they have no where else to go. The courts are so overloaded that the sentence may be served years after the crime was committed.

For longer sentences prisons are so overcrowded that there is barely any support to come off drugs, get an education, get treatment for mental health issues or deal with your trauma.

Prisons aren't working. People drop in and out and the cycle continues.

The justice system as a whole isn't working. We don't just need to overhaul prisons we need to to deal with the courts being underfunded and under staffed, which includes the defence which is massively at risk of collapse because of legal aid cuts. Criminal defence isn't sexy, but the justice system stalls without it.

Police too are massively overstretched, a huge proportion of cases would more properly be dealt with by mental health services, but they are also stretched thin. If it isn't a sexual, domestic or very violent offence or a large scale drug dealing it is probably not going to be dealt with. With or without our current Prison arrangements the police are unable to deal with antisocial behaviours, theft, vandalism and violence with no danger to life. They are dangerously understaffed.

The failings of all of these services has certainly led to a feeling of lawlessness in recent years. Gangs of young people threatening adults, stealing from shops, stealing bikes. You know that police are unlikely to deal with calls about any of these things.

Something has to change, I absolutely support Prison reform, but it will only work if criminal justice is considered more holistically. Every element is important- police, courts, crown, defence but also early interventions in health and social work. Addiction support and services need to be available and funded. There are only a handful of beds in each city.

So.........

What about some sort of national 'Crime Reduction' plan

Stopping people becoming involved in crime.

Enforcement strategies involving both the Police and other agencies eg DVLA, HMRC, Local Authorities etc

Then the question of how we deal with offenders,

Its been pointed out that there are something like 100000 'prolific' offenders in the UK who commit the bulk of offences, identifying and 'dealing' with them could clearly pay dividends. Nearly 30 years ago I spoke to someone in the Home Office who was working on this but needless to say nothing happened.

Firstly, it nearly always comes down to drugs or alcohol.

I’m sure this is true, but people will only get sober if they want to and unfortunately this is often not the case.

They're still building a new HMP Glasgow, to replace Barlinnie (with 300+ more spaces than the old prison had) in 2028.
So I'm sure that they'll still be locking people (the vast majority of them men) up for years to come.

Supposedly it costs almost £50k a year to keep someone locked up.
Compared to about £5k for community-based alternatives.

Muggings, burglaries etc - the sort of crimes committed by people who are desperate for cash - are often related to addictions. If proper drug rehab services were actually available to addicts (rather than just places like the Thistle Centre, which is an experimental and unique 'safer drug consumption facility', or decades-long methadone scrips) I think there would be fewer of them.

I think prison is only for those who are a danger to society.
As pp have said, it is not a deterrent and is just costing the taxpayer a fortune to keep them locked up learning nothing.
This group should be hit where it hurts the most - financially, or else community service.

I’m for a roulette system of punishment.
You cream off top level of murder, GH etc
Then spin the wheel
Never sure what sentence you get.
First offender shop lifter gets 10 years in Broadmoor
Theyd soon think twice

But they don't pay their fines, they don't turn up for community service, they don't adhere to their curfew on tag so then what? Just give up even bothering to prosecute?

I know someone whose been banned from driving since before he was even old enough to have a driving licence. He won't stop because he 'needs to get about, i'm not getting a bus and taxis are expensive'. So he's spent over 15 years driving around with no licence or insurance or registration. Frequently crashes then just dumps the car and gets another one. Parks where he wants because he can't be traced.

Every few months in court as he has been caught so driving without licence or insurance, usually with weed on him so a possession charge too. Gets a fine, tag, community order including community service - doesn't comply with anything he doesn't want to do 'oh well they wanted me to do community service on a weekend in the morning and i'll be too hungover, i'm not giving up my nights out'. So back in court and there'll give him more fines, a longer community order, longer tag etc - doesn't comply so eventually the only thing the court feels they can do is send him to prison for a few weeks. He doesn't mind as it means the slate is wiped clean for fines and a few weeks in prison is a doddle for him.

I've known him be arrested for driving the day after he's come out of prison!

So no, prison doesn't make much of a difference to his offending but what it does do is make his local streets safer for a few weeks.

If people aren't going to be prosecuted, then why should the rest of us pay for stuff? We are in over 55 shared ownership apartments. Our apartments are only, slightly higher spec, than the rented ones. Everyone on the rented side have been long term unemployed and get the apartments fully paid for. Most of them are being handed in benefits what my youngest DD (autistic/LDs) , working in catering in the NHS, take home pay is. For people who can't earn near middle incomes, there isn't much difference in take home pay and benefits. If the ones not working can just rob what they need, not be legit in a car etc, why shouldn't the majority of the country act the same? When you come from the same background, it gets galling that someone can choose alcohol and drugs, fuck their body and brain up and suddenly they are vulnerable and entitled to housing, enough to live on, getting away with criminal behaviour etc.

You don’t think sexual crime is violent? What?

Your title is inaccurate, a consultation is being undertaken, nothing is changing at present, but carry on with the hysterical headline.

My friends husband was a police officer in Aberdeen. She was a gorgeous person and he murdered her. He was vile, but at least he got life.