Meeting of the Parliament 25 June 2026 [Draft]
No, not just now.
Prison reform should allow us to do the upstream work that we know will help people to avoid prison in the first place. The Scottish Government’s penal policy advisers have cited evidence from the Edinburgh study of youth transitions and crime that shows that poverty, poor housing, unemployment and weak community infrastructure increase the risks of social exclusion and fuel distrust and disaffection, which ultimately increases the risk of conflict with the law. The same advisers have said that, when people do fall foul of the law, we need much more focus on early intervention pathways, because formal prosecution often escalates problems, increases stigma and limits opportunities for change.
Some people pose a significant risk of harm to society. We must have ways of preventing such harm. Indeed, harm reduction must be a cornerstone of our justice system. However, for many people—I would argue that this applies to the vast majority of those who are currently incarcerated, including women, neurodiverse people and people with mental health issues—the evidence overwhelmingly shows that prisons not only do not work but actually make things worse.
We cannot keep doing the same thing over and over again and expect different results—there is a word for that. However, we do not have to do so, because other countries have shown us the way. We must understand the socioeconomic causes of crime and tackle them accordingly. When people commit crime, we must exhaust the whole suite of approaches that work better to punish appropriately and rehabilitate before considering prisons, which most often do neither. When incarceration becomes necessary, those places must have the resources that they need to rehabilitate and genuinely help people to do better in the future. Only then can incarceration genuinely be the last resort, rather than a place where we warehouse the problems that society has chosen not to solve.
I move amendment S7M-00469.3, to leave out from second “operational” to end and insert:
“human rights and safety risks for staff and prisoners; further recognises the importance of prioritising harm reduction across the justice system; believes that incarceration should always be the last resort, once all other alternatives have been exhausted; notes that Scotland has one of the highest prison populations in western Europe, including a disproportionate remand population; acknowledges the underlying drivers, including poverty, inequality, homelessness and experience of the care system; notes that the cost per prisoner per year to the public purse is £52,200; recognises the need for effective rehabilitation to reduce offending and re-offending and to benefit the communities that individuals return to; agrees that public safety is paramount and that it is vital that victims and survivors should be at the heart of the justice system, and must be supported and have confidence in it, and agrees, therefore, that a balanced package of measures to expand effective community sentencing and other alternatives to prison, such as restorative justice, bail supervision and supported accommodation, and to enact preventative measures to stop people entering or re-entering the prison system, including sustained investment in housing, mental health services, youth work, addiction services and community support, as part of a transformative justice approach, are necessary to achieve a sustainable prison population now and in the future.”
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