Meeting of the Parliament (Hybrid) 11 May 2022
The member is right—those statistics are bad—so he should come up with a solution. What are the alternatives? What Jamie Greene should have highlighted far more in his speech—which he is right about, and which Liam McArthur highlighted in his speech—is why community justice is not working properly. Why has there not been an increase in the use of community sentences? Why do a third of people not complete them, and why do almost a quarter of those people end up in the other category when they do not complete them?
We need to focus on justice that works and consider why there are issues in the justice system. Why is it the case that 60 per cent of sentences that are handed out in Aberdeen are non-custodial but the figure is only 20 per cent in Edinburgh? It is because sentencers do not trust, and lack understanding of, community sentences. It is also because, as Liam Kerr pointed out, there has been a fundamental failure to invest in non-custodial sentences. We spend only £1,800 per non-custodial sentence compared with the £37,000 that we spend on putting someone in prison for a year.
Finally and briefly, on the police, we cannot focus on numbers. The reality is that, despite the increase in the number of police officers since the creation of Police Scotland, there are fewer police to respond to incidents than there were under the old police forces. The failure to invest in systems, equipment and capital has hamstrung our police and they end up chasing their tails. Let us end the auction of police numbers and get behind our police, so that they can do their jobs properly.
16:52