By Steve Bargeton, political editor

MORE CRIMINALS must be punished in the community to stop Scotland’s jails bursting at the seams, an independent review of criminal justice policy warned yesterday.

The Scottish Prison Commission, set up by the SNP government and chaired by former Labour First Minister Henry McLeish, said that record high prisoner numbers of around 8000 must be cut by about 3000.

The commission’s report said Scotland locked up more people than many other European countries and prisons were increasingly used for those who were “troubled and troubling rather than dangerous”.

“High prison populations do not reduce crime. They are more likely to create pressures that drive reoffending than to reduce it,” said the report.

Among 23 recommendations the report calls for a single community sentence with many options that could be used by the courts to reduce the number of short-term prison sentences.

The commission was specifically asked by ministers to look at the open prison estate after the controversial case of a prisoner at Castle Huntly open prison near Dundee who absconded and raped a young girl.

The report says, “The commission recommends that preparing for release and training for freedom be retained and reinforced as the purposes of the open estate—not easing overcrowding. Scotland will not have a world-leading prison service and a well-run open estate until we reduce the unnecessary, costly, damaging and dangerous overuse of custody.”

It calls for closer vetting before prisoners are put in a low risk category.

Mr McLeish said, “The work done by this commission has been both detailed and demanding. It has brought us to a crossroads where Scotland must choose which future it wants for its criminal justice system.

“Scotland has one possible future, where its prisons hold only serious offenders, prison staff regularly and expertly deliver programmes that can effect change and there is a widely used and respected system of community-based sentences.

“There is another possible future, in which there are many more prisons, as overcrowded as those today.

“Dedicated professionals lack support and suffer from low morale, the public’s distrust of the criminal justice system reaches record levels and fragile communities are ignored.”

The report covers six themes— punishment, prosecution, sentencing, community justice, prisons, new legislation and use of open prisons.

It calls for drug-free wings, better care for young offenders on release and the Home Detention Curfew scheme ended. It wants legislation to stop the early release for prisoners through the Custodial Sentencing and Weapons (Scotland) Act.

A new national sentencing council and a national community justice council should be set up to ensure consistency and enhance public confidence and understanding of sentencing.

Responding to the report, justice secretary Kenny MacAskill said it would help ministers develop policies to help end the arbitrary early release of prisoners.

“These will be linked to the risk posed by the individual and give communities respite from persistent, petty offending through a more coherent penal policy,” he said.

“We are committed to coming forward with detailed proposals once we have had an opportunity to consider the report over the summer.

“The situation we find ourselves in is unacceptable. Overcrowding in our prisons has reached record levels and Audit Scotland predict our prison population could increase by a fifth within the next 10 years.

“We cannot go on as we are. If we do, our prisons are going to burst at the seams. The report sets out a challenging route map for Scotland’s future which can only be achieved if we deliver sharper, more focused community penalties which have the confidence of the public and sentencers.”

The Scottish Tories said the report confirmed their “worst nightmares”.

“When Henry McLeish accepted so enthusiastically his brief to work out how to jail fewer criminals, the alarm bells started to sound,” said justice spokesman Bill Aitken.

“This report confirms our worst nightmares. Prison exists for four reasons: to punish, to deter, to rehabilitate and protect the public. Which bit of that doesn’t the SNP understand?

“It thinks muggers, thieves and drug dealers should escape prison and be given community sentences; the SNP wants to ban jail terms of less than six months and ride roughshod over sentencing powers; it has dumbed down prosecutions so that cases are now heard in the lowest possible court and the sentences are softer and softer.

“Today we have the tragic, final proof that we are living in the SNP’s soft-touch Scotland.”