Minister's community sentence call makes sense

Prison is tough. When jails are full, inmates are warehoused, engagement with staff is non-existent and violence is a constant possibility. Offenders (overwhelmingly male) lose homes and jobs, girlfriends and wives, self-respect and contact with "normal life". It doesn't matter how many episodes of Location, Location they watch on flat-screen TVs, their future location is determined the minute they enter those prison gates. The chance of going straight for many petty offenders is zilch.

On the other hand, prison is also a doddle. There are no gas bills, electricity disconnections or screaming weans. There is order, routine and discipline. And once basic prison rules are accepted, there need be no surrender of past attitudes, behaviours, beliefs or hatreds.

Barlinnie is one of the few places smokers can light up inside – and request a fellow smoker as cellmate, or fellow Rangers or Celtic supporter. A whiff of racial prejudice can be enough to guarantee a same-race cellmate. Polmont Young Offenders Institute segregates Glaswegians from everyone else. Anything for a quiet life.

Who can blame the authorities? To maintain calm, prison officers must remove a need for prisoners to tolerate diversity, difference or challenge, though that inability probably got them jailed in the first place.

Can prison force offenders to take responsibility? As a member of the Scottish Government's Prisons Commission, I met boys on violence reduction classes in Polmont who were indeed being helped in jail.

While short-term offenders in the next block were swaggering, bragging of their crimes and sticking two fingers brazenly to the "civilised" world, these slightly older lads with children of their own had finally begun to think for themselves. They were learning to spot the inevitable confrontations embedded in their "old" lives and their grim conclusion was that re-offending was inevitable if they went "home."

Home may be a warm word for most people. Home for offending youngsters means the endless challenge posed by the local hardman, rival gang, loan shark, dealer – and sometimes the rest of the family.

Would these lads have attended this course if they hadn't been incarcerated? Probably not. Did they pay any attention to similar messages during their first three or four periods of imprisonment? Evidently not.

Money ends up being "wasted" on kids who aren't ready to change, whether they are in jail or in the community. That applies to education too.

Inmates working for Construction Modern Apprenticeships can't complete the full course in jail because they aren't deemed to be working on a "site". Actually, that's right. A real building site isn't just about bricks, pay and fancy machinery. It's about bothering to get there day after day, not flying off the handle at a foreman you don't respect, turning up in the rain and working with people in a team. Day after day.

Community sentences are tough; they are lived amid this reality. Doing time in an artificial regime shorn of challenge and responsibility is one thing. Trying every day to change your substandard life is another.

That's why Kenny MacAskill is right to be calling for a massive switch to community sentences – not because they are tough or the perfect solution to crime but because they are real, the closest thing to real work, involvement and engagement many offenders will ever experience.

Without a multi-million special court, such a system is working in Falkirk where all concerned appear to have had a collective reality check and started behaving like joined-up, caring, smart and motivated public servants. The sheriff doesn't sit in lofty isolation. He accepts social inquiry reports by e-mail, speeding judgements so offenders begin community service orders the next day. At a sheriff's suggestion, a college course in remedial English has been established.

Work details are thought through carefully and younger lads sent out with older hands so the temptation to "act up to mates" is reduced and the chance of male bonding increased. Why don't we read more about successes like these? Good question.

Why don't we see offenders working in the community? Private firms and unions complain prisoners are taking their jobs – so opportunities for more than litter collection are few. Half the year it's cold, wet and dark. So during the winter, offenders work indoors, making the seats, fences, sculptures they will put in place during the summer. Still working – just not visible.

Community sentences do seem to be easy options. Like prison everything is laid on and unlike prison, offenders are home every night. But one basic fact doesn't alter – whether inside jail or out of it, a criminal record of any kind means offenders will find it hard to be gainfully employed ever again. That's why many re-offend.

The bald truth is that crime rates and imprisonment rates are not related. Theft's fallen because Chinese manufacturing skills have cut the price of new goods, slashing the value of second-hand property. Theft rises and falls with rates of heroin addiction. Violent crime rises when drink is taken and the Old Firm play.

Tribalism, machismo, hopelessness, alcohol and drugs – these are the causes of crime and we aren't tackling them in prison or in the community.

Prison applies the tin lid to difficult lives.

And then society applies time, money and resources to trying to prize that tin-lid open again. Rational societies look for results – whether achieved by feather beds or hard labour. The childish nature of our prisons debate suggests prisons could be as spartan as Alcatraz and in Scotland they'd still be full.