Lock them up? Not in Sturgeon’s Scotland

One of the great disappointments of devolution has been the failure of the Scottish parliament to pursue novel ways of fixing political problems. Whether on educational attainment, health indicators, waiting times or economic development, it’s difficult to argue that Scotland under devolution is fundamentally different from how it would have looked had the country voted no in 1997.

But one area where that observation is becoming harder to sustain is criminal justice: the SNP has grown in confidence in recent years and a more liberal — or at least a more nuanced — policy is taking shape. The SNP’s justice secretary Keith Brown set out the latest iteration of this policy in a speech to Holyrood on Tuesday, accompanied by a new strategy document which details a move away from over-reliance on prison sentences.

There were plenty of buzzwords (‘trauma-informed’, ‘person-centred services’) and some eyebrow-raising idealism (Brown said he wanted Scottish communities to be ‘free from inequality and hate’) but there is a hard-headed realism to this vision: in those cases where prison doesn’t work, a different tack will have to be taken.