Meeting of the Parliament 25 June 2026 [Draft]
I absolutely agree. We need to do all that we can to help people to rebuild their lives through, for example, employability services, and make it much less likely that they will find themselves in the same position again.
We also need to send far fewer people to prison in the first place—we have heard a lot about that in the debate. We should expand presumptions against short sentencing and reduce the use of remand in custody, as Yi-pei Chou Turvey’s amendment makes clear. We should create a presumption against the imprisonment of pregnant women and women with young children, and expand those alternative, restorative and community options for non-violent crimes. In short, we should be using prisons as a last resort rather than a first response.
In the final report of the independent sentencing and penal policy commission, which the Scottish Government set up in 2025, the commission argued that short prison sentences
“are not effective at reducing reoffending and often destabilise lives by disrupting housing, employment, treatment and family ties”,
and that
“Community sentences offer a more effective route to rehabilitation”.
We have heard several members talk about the importance of community justice approaches in the debate.
As we have heard, prisons are expensive, costing more than £52,000 per person per year. If we reduced the prison population by 40 per cent, which the Netherlands has shown us is entirely possible, that would free up £180 million that could be transformative for victims and community safety.
We should properly invest in victim support programmes, rape crisis services and shelters that are providing vital support at a time of massive funding cuts. We should also invest in more prevention programmes that support marginalised communities for whom prison sentences are far more likely, such as care-experienced young people, communities that experience high levels of poverty and racialised groups.
We must also start to tackle the underlying social and economic inequalities that cause people to end up in prison. We must invest more not in prisons but in homes, schools, youth work, addiction services, hospitals and community health services as part of a transformative justice approach.
Where we stand on the issue depends on what we think the justice system exists to do. As the University of Strathclyde’s Professor Mike Nellis has said,
“there is a price to be paid for confusing pragmatic and justifiable responses in the here and now, because they are available, with the longer-term pursuit of a safer society.”
If we want a safer society, we need to start collectively reimagining what our justice system looks like and building new systems that centre victims and the prevention of harm.