£80m cost of jail for crime with a knife

Published on Saturday 13 March 2010 19:31

OPPOSITION proposals for mandatory jail sentences for knife crime will cost up to £80 million a year, official figures showed today.

An extra 1,345 offenders would be jailed under measures planned by Labour and the Conservatives.

Labour want mandatory six-month sentences but figures obtained by the Liberal Democrats indicate this would cost the prison service 21m. Tory plans for two-year sentences would top 80m.

Liberal Democrat justice spokesman Robert Brown said: "Labour and Conservative proposals are pie in the sky. Scotland's jails are overcrowded as it is. If an extra 1,345 offenders were sent to prison, we'd need to build another Barlinnie just to house them all.

"All the evidence suggests most of them would come out of prison worse than they went in, and a more serious danger to the public."

Labour lodged amendments to the Criminal Justice and Licensing Bill at Holyrood which would lead to the introduction of their six-month plans. Party leader Iain Gray met John Muir, whose son Damian, 34, was killed in a knife attack as part of a Labour drive to confront the problem.

But a parliamentary answer from Community Safety Minister Fergus Ewing indicates that an extra 1,345 convicts would be jailed for the offences of having in a public place an article with a blade or point, possession of an offensive weapon or restriction of offensive weapons.

The prison service estimates prisoners cost about 31,106 to keep annually, meaning the Labour policy would cost 20,918,785 while Tory plans would hit 83,675,140.

Labour accused the Liberal Democrats of "gross hypocrisy" on knife crime. The party said Brown has previously been quoted as saying that carrying knives "should normally lead to a prison sentence".