Scottish government may introduce unlocked housing for young prisoners and nationalise secure care services.

[Scoffingbiscuits]

The Scottish government is extremely kind towards young convicted criminals. For example, until the age of 25, when they're sentenced the judge has to put what's in their best interests first and only sentence them to imprisonment as a last resort. This is what led to a young man convicted of raping a 13 year old girl in a park, twice, getting a community order to do 270 hours of community work.
It seems that they now want to make things pleasanter for young offenders who have, until now at least, been locked up for the safety of the community. It's short on detail as yet, but a warning of what's to come. The SNP are also looking at nationalising secure care services. A young person has to be very dangerous to end up locked up in Scotland these days, so let's hope that when secure care services are nationalised and the doors are unlocked all will go well for local communities.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-15484349/SNP-want-young-thugs-therapeutic-hubs-no-locked-doors.html?i

They are the most stupid people in the country. A 2 year old would be better. Who the hell votes for these idiots?

Maybe they are trying to prevent the young person becoming a regular prison inmate. There are so many older people who have served many jail sentences and will do more.
If we can make a young first offender stop that must be good.

Great idea if it works. But that’s a big IF. If you were the victim of a violent 20 year old you’d want them locked up away from you as long as possible. Look at what the Scottish government have done to schools. They’ve banned permanent exclusions and mandated restorative conversations instead. As a result kids are utterly terrified of the violent thugs roaming around school totally unhindered. Disaster.

Absolutely @Weetabixw
”well Caleb, it must have been very upsetting for you to see that Matthew didn’t like it when you stabbed him for his trainers… Matthew don’t you see how privileged you are? Caleb shouldn’t have had to go to the physical task of stabbing you, please learn from this and apologise to him.”

The SNPs going to have this as their campaign video with footage of the hordes of feral, aggressive teens roaming Glasgow City Centre with Taylor Swifts “Look what you made me do” as the background music.
because it’s always someone else’s fault.

Oh dear. With SNP’s track record on schools, this does not bode well. @EvangelineTheNightStar I think you’ve summed it up.

If these changes are more likely to lead to reform which keeps people from reoffending and ending up in prison in future then I am all for it. There is a huge amount of evidence that punitive punishments are no deterrent to offending.

If you actually read the article it seems to me that they are proposing to still have secure facilities but also providing these flex secure facilities for young people who might not necessarily meet the criteria for the secure facilities. As usual the devil is in the detail.

It looks as if they are trying to provide more individualised packages depending on the person .

For petty offenders particularly the prison system really doesnt seem to offer any successful rehabilitation. Surely it is in society's interests to try and prevent as many people from re-offending as possible.

That is the theory but whether it will be put into practice well and successfully is another matter

Probably not but this policy isn't going to change the root cause of the majority of low level crime. That's a lot more complicated and fund heavy.

We're not talking about low level crime here. As I've said, a young man was convicted of raping a 13 year old girl twice and didn't get a custodial sentence - just some hours of work in the community. With the current sentencing regime in Scotland a young man would have to do something incredibly serious to end up in prison.
We know how the ideology of never wanting to punish anyone is working out in schools, don't we? Bad behaviour is encouraged and it's everyone else who suffers for it.

And the victims who want to be able to recover, safe in the knowledge that the vermin that harmed them are locked away and cannot escape?

Your response is EXACTLY the issue with what’s going on in schools now, where someone who has been attacked and has broken ribs will have to return to the same school that their attacker attends, because the Scottish government barred permanent exclusions.

What if you had been raped by a stranger who was found to live in the same area as you? Would you be happy if the government told you they were going to let them come and go as they please and you just had to suck it up, because otherwise they might reoffend? Or would you rather they said that yes this guy is vermin and we’ll find the funds to keep him locked up as long as necessary, because law and order is something we value?

I had my bike nicked 8 months ago from outside a library where I had chained it up and it still enrages me. Law and order matters.

Well no. The best way to reduce that is to decrease poverty which would require reducing inequality and nobody seems to be very in favour of that as it means rich people having less of an advantage over the rest.

That would be the people of Scotland.

The devil is in the detail. They are not talking about applying it to serious criminals. @feellikeanalien has summarised it very well a few posts up.

Are we really all succumbing to the Daily Mail now?

Hilarious how so many people are quick to throw around insults such as ‘idiots’ towards the Scottish electorate but then fall straight into the rage-pit that the Daily Mail, a paper created to provoke prejudice, has designed for them.

If you’re going to comment on something please read into the subject beyond the headlines, if you do and you still think we should have a Victorian style ‘Crime and Punishment’ system then I’m glad you’re nowhere near politics.

@Erin1975 Is correct, if we really want to tackle crime then we need to tackle the generational poverty and culture of violence that helps it grow and fester.

Yes, there have been some incorrect decisions where extremely serious crimes have been penalised too lightly.

The fact is though that as a society, the more educated amongst us realising that punishing young people harshly just encourages a life of crime, needs to take hard compassionate decisions to do what we can to help the person and break the cycle of crime/poverty.

This doesn’t mean there shouldn’t be consequences, but if custody is the right answer I would rather they were taught personal responsibility/control and given a purpose in society than merely locked away punished and trained to commit more crime.

What consequences faced the person who raped that 14 year old? None. What consequences faced those that were charged with assaulting my 14 year old nephew at school? None. He barely attends school anymore as he lives in such fear of it happening again. Yes not having any consequences for assaulting my nephew might be better for the bully, but it has ruined my nephews life.

What about the victims of these crimes? Does what’s best for them not matter to you whatsoever? Do you salve your conscience by not giving them a passing thought?

None @Weetabixw as you can see people are more concerned about the rights and feelings of those committing violent and aggressive crimes, and making sure they’re ok and happy and supported. Their victims are just ignored and basically told how awful they are if they draw attention to what’s happened.

This is obviously an emotive subject for you, I completely understand where you coming from and am aware of how this can make you feel.

Justice however cannot run on revenge/emotions and as a society we have to make balanced decisions.

The 14 year old who was raped was scandalous, this was clearly a poor decision and has damaged not only justice but the perception of justice in the country.

Lessons seem to have been learned by the judiciary as a result of this case.

As for your nephew there are a few factors at play here, yes there should be consequences for the assailant but there should also be a focus on helping them stop this behaviour and giving them the opportunity to choose another path.

I would not support removing a 14 year old from society because of this, the effects would encourage the child, and he is a child, to descend further into a life of crime due to the removal of positive social influences, support and opportunities.

There is a reason that we don’t allow victims to set punishments, vengeance and revenge follow, scales are justice symbols for a reason.

As for your nephew, he’s clearly been through a traumatic experience and is struggling to cope.

As a family you need to make a decision to help him overcome this or enable him to damage himself through staying in victimhood forever.

He needs to do something to regain his confidence and help him get back into the world.

Starting to build strength through going to the gym would be great, martial arts like boxing/judo would give him the physical confidence to know that he is capable of defending himself should this happen again as well as gaining the self-respect (and respect of others) of knowing he was able to overcome this.

Yes, in an ideal world boys wouldn’t need to do this but the reality is there will always be some level of physical confrontation amongst teenage boys.

I grew up in what now known as a severely deprived area, there were serious fights at school all the time not to mention gangs and what we would call recreational violence.

My children grew up in Clarkston, a very different place, but don’t think for a second there wasn’t school bullying, fights in the playground, fights with other schools in shops etc..

Having spent years standing at the sidelines of football/rugby games I’ve seen how easily punches are thrown, even amongst boys from the supposed ‘better’ areas.

You have an opportunity to help your nephew become resilient enough to thrive in the world he lives in, this will affect his success in life, future chances and happiness etc..

Although it sounds harsh enabling him to live like this is a failure of parenthood.

Forcing him to attend a school with someone who has assaulted him to the extent that they were charged by the police is simply a failure in the school system to safeguard him. It’s that straightforward. It needs to be stopped going forward. That bully has no place in the school community. He has forfeited that place through his violent actions. The Scottish education system has been trying your way for some time, and violence is getting worse and worse as a result. Someone will die soon then hopefully it will be addressed. Until then we sit on our hands while the ideology you espouse continues to damage lives.

He shouldn’t have to develop skills to defend himself. What on earth are you on about? Why should he have to do anything? He has done nothing wrong.Just listen to yourself! No one beats me up at work and if they did they’d be immediately removed. Anyone that beat anyone up in my rough state school was permanently excluded. People should be able to go about their lives in basic safety. Those that jeapodise that need to be removed from society.

Pupils who commit violence against other pupils or against teachers in Scotland are at worst suspended for 3 days, and are often just asked to apologise. This is just telling them that there are no consequences and it's fine for them to carry on. It's the victims who end up having to move schools or be home-educated, or just live in fear. It's bad enough being attacked without then being told that nobody's going to do anything about it and they just have to put up with it for the whole of their time at school. And apparently physical attacks on teachers are worse in Scotland than anywhere else in the UK. This isn't helping pupils (including the violent ones) or teachers. It's just giving the message that crime is acceptable and victims are on their own. And do we really think that those boys (primarily) aren't committing crimes outside of school?
Schools in England - 10,000 permanent exclusions per year. Scotland - in recent years either 1 or no permanent exclusions per year.
Where is your proof that this system is working? How exactly is the system preventing those boys from bullying / committing crime again?

Yes, helping him regain his confidence and overcome his fear sounds like a terrible course of action.

It would be interesting to see the life paths of those who were permanently excluded from your school had, how much further harm they caused that could have been prevented.

Let’s not pretend all kids who were involved in bullying/assaults years so were immediately excluded from school.

I can remember many serious incidents but I only knew of 2 children at my school who were expelled, most lucky if they got a 3 day suspension.

No-one stated he done anything wrong, we often need to deal with things in life that shouldn’t be the case and aren’t his fault.

Plus what would happen if he went back to school if the bully was excluded and it happened again?

If the bully’s friends blamed him and targeted him?

The harsh fact is that many children at the school will see him as a potential victim now, bullying takes place everywhere.

You can teach him how to grow the confidence to deal with it, or stay the same scared frightened boy.

I’m not talking about him going into school and assaulting people, I’m talking about helping him gain the confidence to be assertive enough to deal with attempted bullying before it reaches that stage.

If the school was able to set meaningful boundaries in the first place this whole situation could be avoided. A teacher friend from England is aghast at the lack of permanent exclusions. She thinks just having the ultimate sanction in their back pocket puts a stop to those who are capable of behaving but are tempted not to from getting into trouble. The lack of consequences is letting down everyone here.

Couldn't agree more.

There is no justice system - you can nearly kill someone and be in and out in one year. The police spend so much time charging people and then found guilty and no punishment.

Wow.

Would you say that I'd you were being battered at home? You need to grow your confidence. Or at work. So ambulance staff can be battered. It simply so wrong to expect children to be able to somehow know how to stop physical attacks.

Yes. Let’s not arrest domestic abusers. We can teach wives self defence. After all punches are always going to be thrown. Bolts will be boys and men will be men. 🙄