How long after New Year did your resolution disappear? What made you crack? The last unopened box of chocolates staring wistfully at you every time you opened the cupboard door? Your insistence you weren’t waterproof enough to go running on cold January evenings? Lots of great intentions, policies and practices can slip back into old ways and it takes sunlight and commitment to reinvigorate them.

Back in July 2019, the Scottish Government extended the presumption against short sentences to under 12 months. This means a court should not jail someone for a year or less unless it considers no other sentence is appropriate. It's a laudable and evidence-based move, with an understanding that the revolving door of short sentences provides no time to work with people on their offending. And keeping people in their communities with supervision, unpaid work and access to services is more effective and indeed less costly, physically, mentally and economically.

Alas, Covid emerged and so many things that were started stagnated and were put on the back-burner as we dealt with more pressing issues. During 2020-21 as Covid hit, we sent 5,438 people to prison, with a substantial 4,100 for six months or less. We don’t have updated statistics yet but it’s likely that the ongoing effect of Covid will have also affected 2021-22. Regardless, there is a chasm between the policy intent and the evidence of implementation, but why?

I had a conversation with a sheriff a few weeks ago who said: “But what do we do with those who won’t comply with a community order?” And it’s a valid point. But it’s more complicated than that. There are those who ‘can’t comply’ and those who ‘won’t comply’.

The first group are those whose lives are chaotic, the souls who you see on the street, often floridly unwell with mental health issues untreated and often undiagnosed. Their homes won’t have a calendar on the wall with the dates of appointments and justice/social work meetings laid out in different coloured ink.

Many of this group won’t manage the time and effort required to comply 100 per cent with a community order without huge help and phenomenal social work support. We need to support them in different ways to help them through the order or, even better, intervene early or divert them from the system in the first place if possible.

The second group is more tricky, people who know a short-term sentence in prison is the easy option. Not for them the early morning rises to complete unpaid work in the cold, leaving a warm bed. They won’t have those pesky social workers unpicking and monitoring their behaviour. The idea of the monotony of six months behind the door in prison doesn’t faze them, they know many people there and it holds no fear. We will struggle with this group, yet they could change at some stage in their lives, such as by engaging with support for substance misuse or other drivers of their behaviour.

We require a relaunch of the policy, and I need to up my game and try harder to showcase the services that can help keep people on the straight and narrow. It’s a resolution worth having.

Karyn McCluskey is chief executive of Community Justice Scotland

Despite Scotland's presumption against short prison sentences, about 75% of inmates were jailed for six months or less in 2020-21 – Karyn McCluskey