Why is anyone surprised that the SNP government has been forced to open prison gates?
Jails are dangerously overcrowded. Early release for hundreds of prisoners is now the governmentâs only answer, as my colleague Andrew Learmonth reported exclusively in The Herald this week.
It should never have come to this. Police officers, social workers, psychologists â experts of every stripe â have warned for years that Scotlandâs prison system is broken. The government didnât listen.
Ministers should have done everything possible to cut offending before it even happens. Prison doesnât stop crime. Itâs the last resort when all other attempts have failed.
If we spent a little on tackling the causes of crime, weâd save the huge amounts it costs to lock someone up and fix the damage of their offending.
We know child poverty can be a first step towards prison. Clearly, not every child born poor offends. Many have happy, successful lives. But poverty increases risk.
Poverty feeds into addiction, care, homelessness, and early death. I recently spoke to Fraser McKinlay, who heads The Promise Scotland, the organisation tasked to oversee the care system shake-up.
He was a leading Audit Scotland official, monitoring national finances. McKinlay believes weâre spending money all wrong. âStop spending money on crisis intervention,â he says. An example of âsmart spendingâ would see funds focused at the point where a childâs life might set them on the path to care and prison. That means shifting money towards early years support for families.
Scotlandâs acclaimed Violence Reduction Unit (VRU) is a perfect case study for this approach. The VRU treated crime as a public health problem. Result? Offending dropped.
Former VRU director Niven Rennie, once one of Scotlandâs leading police officers, told me of âthe stupidity of the cost of prison, compared to the cost of providing services to prevent crimeâ. In other words, help people who risk going to prison by improving their lives. The result will be less crime and fewer prisoners.
âWe need a prevention strategy that starts pre-birth⌠Unless you do that no police strategy is worth a bean because all youâre doing is reacting, not preventing.
âAll public service agencies should be involved. We need to recognise the links between addiction, violence, poor health, and poor education outcomes.â Over 50% of the prison population âwere in careâ.
Rennie added: âMost of us would put our hand in our pocket to stop a baby going into care, but somewhere between birth and 16, weâre prepared to put the same person in prison. Thereâs something very wrong there. We need a fundamental rethink.
âMost violence in Scotland happens in the poorest postcodes. Very often someone is victim one week and perpetrator the next⌠Violence is often a reaction to childhood trauma â they lash out. Thatâs where support should be targeted.â
Political âshort-termismâ is the stumbling block. Politicians want to show theyâre tough on crime so theyâll win elections and not face attack by the tabloids. Budgets therefore donât target social spending at the poorest. âThe whole system is wrong and needs rethought,â Rennie says.
A courageous politician would take money from the prisons budget â which clearly isnât been spent well â and invest in long-term support for children in poverty, thereby cutting crime.
âIf we invested more in dealing with social problems, crime would fall and society would be a better place,â Rennie told me. âSo, we need more support for families struggling, but what do we do? We withdraw support, cut back on public services. Weâve made them rely on foodbanks.â
Mary Glasgow, who runs Children 1st â previously known as the Scottish Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children, recently told me that poverty is killing the very notion of childhood.
One of Glasgowâs staff was on the verge of tears recently as he described a mother âsurviving on toastâ so her children could eat. âThere are children having childhoods that are absolutely heartbreaking,â she says.
Can government not see the risks such experiences pose to children?
Just last week, Scotlandâs most high-profile child psychologist Dr Suzanne Zeedyk told me politicians are âoverseeing cruelty and neglect to childrenâ.
Sheâs an expert in Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs) â issues like physical, emotional or sexual abuse; neglect; parental mental illness; domestic violence; parents in prison; and addiction in the home.
These experiences can set a path towards an adulthood of drink, drugs, bad relationships, ill-health, crime, prison, and early death. Two-thirds of Scottish children suffer at least one ACE by age eight. One-in-ten experience three or more. Zeedykâs philosophy is simple: if we fail children, we store up hell for society.
Public money, she says, is being âwastedâ in picking up the pieces when damaged children reach adulthood. Instead, we should invest wisely in making life better for children â a policy which would lead in the long-term to less pressure on the NHS, police, social work and prisons. Thereâs nothing cost-effective about how we treat modern childhood, Zeedyk believes.
Everyone who understands the prison system knew it was failing. Instead of listening, the SNP government went its own way. Now prisons are broken.
Thereâs echoes of the housing crisis. The SNP was warned repeatedly that its policies were breaking Scotlandâs housing system. It took until this week for the government to finally admit its failings and declare an emergency.
Itâs time ministers also admit theyâve wrecked prisons. Declare an emergency, and this time listen to people like Rennie, McKinlay, Glasgow and Zeedyk. They want to help, and unlike the government, they have the answers.
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