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Monday, November 03, 2003
At a lecture organised by the Howard League Scotland in Edinburgh last week, Professor Andrew Coyle of the International Centre for Prison Studies, University of London, challenged Scotland to decide if it will be a country that regards prison as a last resort or follow the example of the USA and become a high custody society. Scotland already has one of the highest custody rates in Europe.
He was disturbed by the last year’s Scottish Prison Estates Review which addressed the question in purely managerial terms - how many prisons and where should they be located? Professor Coyle argued that the issues were much more fundamental than that and were really about what kind of society Scotland wants to be.
Looking to Finland as an example of what could be achieved he argued that “The inexorable rise of the prison population in Scotland will only stop if society as a whole and politicians in particular choose not to go down that road.”
He concluded that; “Over the last decade we have allowed criminal justice to expand into areas where it has no locus. Criminal justice systems can be used to underpin and to help to support the values of a society. They cannot be used as a substitute for these values. I suggest that we face a real danger of allowing this to happen.”
Lecture text: “Keeping Scotland Safe: The contribution of criminal justice”.(.pdf)
Links:
Howard League Scotland
International Centre for Prison Studies
Proposals for the Future of the Scottish Prison Service Estate
Posted by MM
on Mon 3rd Nov 2003
at 3:57 pm
Criminal justice reform Prisons and prisoners Sentencing Prison sentences
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