Sentencing policy: 'Crime victims have right to life free of fear'

Published on Wednesday 2 July 2008 10:28

FORMER First Minister Henry McLeish produced few surprises in revealing the Scottish Prison Commission's recommendations for future sentencing policy.

Imprisonment should be a punishment of last resort and the desire to see offenders "pay back" to the communities they have damaged is a laudable one.

So too is the idea of conditional sentences, whereby a convict has a jail term suspended pending successful completion of community work or the payment of fines.

It is true that Scotland jails far more people than comparable European countries, and that every effort should be made to lose this unenviable record.

But parts of Scotland have lots of other records which need to be consigned to history, like the lowest life expectancy in Western Europe and soaring levels of knife crime. And who ripped a city apart on a drunken rampage in the name of a football team? It might only have been a minority of supporters of one Glasgow club, but even Chelsea fans managed to behave themselves in Moscow.

Today the Evening News reports two sickening incidents, both perpetrated by young people: one in which a memorial to a little girl was vandalised and the other where pensioners were terrified when youths hurled stones at their bus windows. Both are senseless acts which have brought untold distress to the recipients, and although no-one has been seriously hurt, the impact cannot be underplayed.

But the core problem is not just the failure of the justice system to find methods of redress which do not encourage repeat offending, but a continued failure of social policy which affects huge swathes of the nation; districts where ill-health is endemic; academic achievement is crushed by peer pressure; worklessness is a way of life and respect for others is little more than a quaint notion. Scotland is not alone in this.

Too many young men in urban Britain have absolutely no respect for the law – but at the heart of it is an almost total lack of genuine respect for themselves.

Until this is tackled, and sadly for many of today's teenagers it is probably too late, all the community programmes in the world will make little difference when the ultimate sanction represents little more than free meals and a ready supply of drugs.

Yesterday we reported how a man from Liverpool deliberately stole from a shop in order to be taken into custody so he could obtain a travel warrant back to England.

With such an attitude to the justice system, is it really any surprise that jails are overflowing?

It is true that simply building more jails is not the answer, but any reform should not just be about inmates and jail staff. Victims of even low-level crime have a right to a life free of fear.