Hansard

I express my heartfelt thanks to all those who have been involved in supporting survivors and victims of all forms of violence throughout the pandemic.

As recorded in my entry in the register of members’ interests, I have spent my most recent pre-election life working for a rape crisis centre. I have seen the consequences of lockdown and social isolation on people trapped in violent, abusive and unhealthy environments.

We still live in a deeply patriarchal society in which the abuse of power causes life-changing—sometimes life-ending—physical and mental harm. We should not accept that as inevitable.

I have also seen the mind-blowing resilience of many survivors and the mutual support that they can give one another when adequate resources allow for safe and confidential sharing of stories in spaces where they are believed and not judged. I pay tribute to the work of all those who provide safe spaces and support survivors of gender-based violence, often putting their own wellbeing at risk. Vicarious trauma is real. Workers who support survivors of gender-based and, I dare say, other forms of violence are subjected to the risk of vicarious trauma every day. Those workers do phenomenally important work and are incredibly resilient. However, we should not have to rely on the resilience of individuals. Gender-based violence—indeed, most violence—is not inevitable. It is a product of oppression. It is a consequence of often intersecting inequalities. It is a direct result of imbalances of power.

That brings me to what I believe our justice system should fundamentally be about. Our justice system should exist to correct imbalances of power. Equality in front of the law is fundamental to any democratic society. Our justice system should focus on doing what it can to correct the power inequalities that exist in our society as a result of gender, race, employment status, wealth and other issues that so often cause division. A justice system that seeks to redress abuses of power is vital to a fair, equal, safe, secure and well society.

However, the system that we have inherited is one that acts in the interests of the powerful in too many instances. The unjust use of power leads to people being killed in the workplace, as happened in the Stockline disaster in 2004, when nine people died and 33 were injured because a corporation did not take health and safety law seriously enough. Its penalty was a £400,000 fine—just less than £45,000 per person, or per life.

There is a woefully low rate of prosecution of men who rape and sexually assault women, and there is a lack of trauma-informed support for traumatised survivors. Abuses of power mean that black, Asian and minority ethnic people are shamefully overrepresented in prisons and are often disproportionately the victims of hate crime. Abuses of power result in prisons being used overwhelmingly to incarcerate the poor while failing to reduce offending.

Communities, such as those living in the shadow of Mossmorran, have to live with the negative consequences of environmental injustices. People in that community have had their lives ruined by continuous flaring that is visible from the other side of the Forth, by sirens and by dangerous hydrocarbon pollution. Although the Health and Safety Executive has finally submitted a prosecution to the procurator fiscal, do we really think that, had an individual caused that level of social damage, they would have been left unprosecuted for all these years?

We have shamefully high levels of suicide and self-harm in our prisons. I know that I am not the only one to have been affected by the death, just over three years ago, of Katie Allan, who was a victim of bullying. Since Katie died, there have been more than 20 suicides in our prisons. We urgently need to transform the culture of our prisons so that they can focus on reducing offending. We have to right those wrongs.

We must take a preventative approach. Prevention produces better outcomes for individuals, families and communities. Education, youth work and social work can play key roles in crime prevention. They also help to create social capital and social solidarity and to build community, but they need to be adequately resourced. Communities should also be involved in the planning and delivery of those services.

Spending resources on early intervention and education is vital and is a crucial part of any justice and crime prevention programme. We know that early intervention can identify risk factors and explore ways in which people can develop to their fullest potential.

Supporting interventions at the points at which people come into contact with the criminal justice system is important. For instance, women in prisons are vulnerable. Many are there because of a history of abuse and substance dependency. They often need support and treatment, not incarceration.

I will send Pauline McNeill the information on institutional violence. There is a lot of such violence, particularly in women’s prisons, which we need to address. The Netherlands has done interesting work in that area. It has reduced crime by taking a radical stance against prisons. In fact, it has closed more than half of its prisons. That has freed up resources that can be used to prevent crime rather than to simply deal with its effects.

I have already spoken in the chamber about care and how the care ethic should form the foundation of our economy. I have also spoken about holistic approaches that take account of underlying causes of inequalities. Both are vital to our justice system. I look forward to working with others across the chamber to deliver the transformation that our justice system needs and our country deserves.

I move amendment S6M-00294.4, to insert at end:

“; considers that the transformation of the justice system must take a human rights and equalities approach to address the disproportionate impact of punitive procedures on BAME communities and other marginalised people and the retraumatising of victims and survivors; acknowledges the urgent need to identify and increase enforcement action against corporate and environmental crime; recognises that an holistic approach to crime reduction and restorative justice that addresses the underlying causes of crime and focuses on rehabilitation, rather than punishment, reduces reoffending and delivers better outcomes for individuals and communities and tackles unacceptable levels of institutional violence, self-harm and suicide, and calls on the Scottish Government to explore opportunities to implement such approaches, including directing more resources towards prevention and reforming policing and prisons.”