In terms of justice, things can always get worse. The mid to late 1980s witnessed a near collapse into anarchy for the penal system, a period when prison roofs burned, hostages were taken, prisoners covered themselves in excrement and the SAS flew into a field near Peterhead in unmarked black helicopters to storm the occupied establishment. It wasn’t too far from the truth to say that the lunatics had taken over the asylum. The reasons for the prison riots were complex and many changes in penal thought and practice resulted but one factor stood out – overcrowding. In those dark days of prison insurrection, there were just 5,000 prisoners occupying Scotland’s cells and the talk was of reducing those numbers. Yet, today we have a prison population of more than 8,000, at a time of decreasing general population levels, falling crime rates and a whole plethora of community-based initiatives designed to reduce, prevent and rehabilitate criminal behaviour. The position is untenable. We are yet again winning a race no one else wants to win – we are incarcerating almost twice as many offenders as anywhere else in northern Europe. In this context, the defeat of the Justice Secretary’s bid to extend the Home Detention Curfew programme in the Justice Committee last week probably pales into insignificance but it was an important moment in the SNP Government’s justice agenda. It is shameful that some opposition political figures were plainly more concerned with appeasing the ‘lock ‘em up and throw away the key’ agenda of the tabloid press and their own fiefdoms than addressing the underlying problems of how to reverse a trend. In the midst of that chaos and prison mayhem 20 years ago, a civil servant from housing with a strong persona and an open mind and style was brought in – Peter McKinley – and, in three years, turned the mess around. He put in place new thinking which was to transform the Scottish prisons. The seminal document which emerged from this period was Opportunity and Responsibility, which transformed penal philosophy away from a base of military-like brutality, discipline, and despair, towards what was then a revolutionary idea of treating prisoners with dignity and respect. It was brave and it was radical and it worked in bringing peace to the prisons but today it is time to be brave once more. The Justice Secretary Kenny MacAskill has to have the political courage to wade in with a radical and holistic agenda for change. Yes, community sentencing is the only viable answer to increasing prison numbers but what MacAskill and his Prisons Commission need to do first is to convince the public, the judiciary and the offenders that it is not a soft option, and then expand it. Not this drip, drip, drip of tagging, home detention and community initiatives. He needs to get tough on the soft option. He needs to call time on those social work professionals that say they can oversee community sentencing – they can’t and they haven’t. He needs to bring in real enforcers who are the hard face of community sentence orders. He needs to stop kowtowing to the civil servants that have allowed the justice department to become one of the most resistant to change; it’s no coincidence that all other portfolios look more shiny and dynamic in this new Government, and he needs to listen to the judiciary and convince them that community sentencing is tough, is a punishment and will work and if offenders renege on their community sentencing agreement, they need to understand that they will be dealt with swiftly and firmly and will go to jail. Keep jail as a last resort for those hard-nosed offenders that are a threat to society and make this the year that changes the next decade.

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