Broadcast on March 11 2010
According to Scottish government figures, last year nearly 17,000 people were sent to jail.
More than 1,000 were imprisoned for knife crime (a 21% increase on the previous year), after the government decided to clamp down harder on those found in possession of knives.
The Tories and Labour are critical however of these statistics, because they believe that 70% of those caught with knives still do not receive a custodial sentence.
Tied to this, Robert Brown, the Liberal Democrat noted, “the figures show that rates of re-offending are appallingly high. Offenders frequently come out of prison as more hardened offenders than when they went in - and all at huge cost to the public purse.”
These different opposition comments illustrate the dilemma for our society. Do we simply go on increasing our prison population or do we find alternatives to custodial sentencing? Presently, (proportionally speaking), there are only three countries in Europe that imprison more people than Scotland.
In a healthy society the aim of imprisonment cannot be solely that of punishment. There must also be the opportunity for rehabilitation on the part of the offender. Perhaps offenders need to have the opportunity to pay back the people (or the community) they have wronged and they certainly need to be given support to move away from a criminal lifestyle.
For me it’s hard to see how serious rehabilitation can take place in the context of a short prison sentence. Evidence shows that short periods of imprisonment make re-offending more likely. Last year a third of all people sent to prison had already more than ten previous convictions.
The recent Report of the Prison Commission suggests moving away from all prison sentences under six months and introducing greater use of Community Payback Schemes. This way less serious offenders have an opportunity to make amends for the crime, and prison is kept as a last resort for those more serious criminals who pose a danger to society – those, for example, who have actually used knives to commit crimes.
There are no easy answers here, but as a Christian I believe that this model suggests a way to embody both the demands of justice and the opportunity for offenders to turn their lives around.