Early Release Scheme in Scotland

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Dier - 1558

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Jan 4, 2023
Are the wrong categories of prisoners being up for release ?.
Should there be an unequivocal and clear threshold of release based on individual case by case assessment ?.
Should more sentences be commuted to social and community work orders than custodial ones ? and that work be for example repairing pot holes, maintaining parks and recreation, reinstating road and street clearing.
 
Last edited:
Dier - 1558 said:
Are the wrong categories of prisoners being up for release ?.
Should there be an unequivocal and clear threshold of release based on individual case by case assessment ?.
Should more sentences be commuted to social and community work orders than custodial ones ?and that work be for example repairing pot holes, maintaining parks and recreation, reinstating road and street clearing.
Click to expand...
A big problem for Scotland, England and Wales is that the early released criminals need tagged.

G4S have responsibility for that in all locations because some idiots thought it would be a good idea to privatise what should be public services.

As a private company their responsibility is to their shareholders not the public or their safety.

A TV documentary not so long ago did an in depth investigation into G4S and in particular their criminal tagging services.

Too long, didn't watch 😑

The upshot, at time of filming, was more that 4,000 criminals were walking the streets of England waiting on a tag to be fitted; murders, rapists among them.

G4S didn't have the staffing numbers required and many of the staff were not properly trained. One wee lassie was sent out, on her own, to tag a violent rapist! Great idea thought nobody but G4S.

Some European countries have a decent system of keeping low level criminals in what is basically a hostel. The criminals are allowed to go to work but need to be back soon after they finish. That might even include going to their home to have tea with the family sort of thing, memory a bit hazy there.

Those that have jobs are able to keep them. I'm fairly sure those that don't have jobs do the sort of stuff suggested.

The torys were bragging about building thousands of prisoner places in the prisons estate (England). What they don't mention is, that due to no investment in the prisons estate previously the older prisons had to close. The net increase was something like 50 more places during the tory incompetence years.

Politicians, have for a long time, seen the average number of prisoners increase year on year; they dream up stuff that sees criminals in jails more often and longer but didn't build enough jail space to cope.

Barlinnie was hovering around capacity over the years I was a regular there, that was over 30 years ago and the replacement is still 2 years away.

We need a complete overhaul of the systems and that starts with stuff that will stop (ambitious) criminals being criminals in the first place, right back to the increasingly anti social society we're sliding into.
 
Tell me if I'm being over simplistic but if you are a danger to the community - violence, sex crime, stalking, threatening or abusive then no, you shouldn't be eligible.

Anything else - fraud, minor drug offences, hurty words online etc... means test it. Or just give them community service.

You could put less resources into low supervision prisoners and more into keeping bams off the streets.
 
Jack said:
A big problem for Scotland, England and Wales is that the early released criminals need tagged.

G4S have responsibility for that in all locations because some idiots thought it would be a good idea to privatise what should be public services.

As a private company their responsibility is to their shareholders not the public or their safety.

A TV documentary not so long ago did an in depth investigation into G4S and in particular their criminal tagging services.

Too long, didn't watch 😑

The upshot, at time of filming, was more that 4,000 criminals were walking the streets of England waiting on a tag to be fitted; murders, rapists among them.

G4S didn't have the staffing numbers required and many of the staff were not properly trained. One wee lassie was sent out, on her own, to tag a violent rapist! Great idea thought nobody but G4S.

Some European countries have a decent system of keeping low level criminals in what is basically a hostel. The criminals are allowed to go to work but need to be back soon after they finish. That might even include going to their home to have tea with the family sort of thing, memory a bit hazy there.

Those that have jobs are able to keep them. I'm fairly sure those that don't have jobs do the sort of stuff suggested.

The torys were bragging about building thousands of prisoner places in the prisons estate (England). What they don't mention is, that due to no investment in the prisons estate previously the older prisons had to close. The net increase was something like 50 more places during the tory incompetence years.

Politicians, have for a long time, seen the average number of prisoners increase year on year; they dream up stuff that sees criminals in jails more often and longer but didn't build enough jail space to cope.

Barlinnie was hovering around capacity over the years I was a regular there, that was over 30 years ago and the replacement is still 2 years away.

We need a complete overhaul of the systems and that starts with stuff that will stop (ambitious) criminals being criminals in the first place, right back to the increasingly anti social society we're sliding into.
Click to expand...

The tagging system is a joke from my experience with someone in it.

The wee bam in question has removed his several times and been AWOL for days with little in the way of comuppance once he's inevitably arrested again.
 
Two Headed Boy said:
Tell me if I'm being over simplistic but if you are a danger to the community - violence, sex crime, stalking, threatening or abusive then no, you shouldn't be eligible.

Anything else - fraud, minor drug offences, hurty words online etc... means test it. Or just give them community service.

You could put less resources into low supervision prisoners and more into keeping bams off the streets.
Click to expand...
Exactly.
 
Two Headed Boy said:
Tell me if I'm being over simplistic but if you are a danger to the community - violence, sex crime, stalking, threatening or abusive then no, you shouldn't be eligible.

Anything else - fraud, minor drug offences, hurty words online etc... means test it. Or just give them community service.

You could put less resources into low supervision prisoners and more into keeping bams off the streets.
Click to expand...
Aye, you're being a bit simplistic 😆 IMO.

Who deserves to be in the pokey?

A wifey, who after years of domestic abuse murders her husband. Chances of reoffending nil.

Someone with a total disregard for the law who, for example, among other things racks up drink driving offence after drink driving offence.

Given, at the end of the day, everything comes down to money.

AI Overview. The average cost to keep someone in prison in Scotland is approximately £47,140 to £52,260 per year.

Does the seriousness of the crime justify spending £50k a year on them keeping them locked up or could less money be spent in other ways that would protect the public and maybe do the criminals some good?
 
Jack said:
Aye, you're being a bit simplistic 😆 IMO.

Who deserves to be in the pokey?

A wifey, who after years of domestic abuse murders her husband. Chances of reoffending nil.

Someone with a total disregard for the law who, for example, among other things racks up drink driving offence after drink driving offence.

Given, at the end of the day, everything comes down to money.

AI Overview. The average cost to keep someone in prison in Scotland is approximately £47,140 to £52,260 per year.

Does the seriousness of the crime justify spending £50k a year on them keeping them locked up or could less money be spent in other ways that would protect the public and maybe do the criminals some good?
Click to expand...

I'd say the wifey wasn't a danger to the community and the repeat offender was. On the surface, you'd be inclined to say she'd be up for early release and he'd likely need to demonstrate a serious attempt at rehabilitation before being considered.

In all seriousness though, I get that it would be more nuanced than I could summarise in a post on here.

That said, I'd stand by the guiding principle of keeping the wider community safe. As someone with more experience of the system, do you think that is being achieved just now? It certainly doesn't feel like it.
 
The grinning cop killers should not see the light of day again.

The above brings the general question into sharp focus. It can’t be a broad brush approach but those who have been guilty of posing a danger to the community need to be assessed as such.

I also broadly understand the pressures on prisons, capacity and finances.
A wicked problem and whatever is identified as a solution will be divisive and most likely controversial.

I certainly don’t want dangerous folk reintroduced to the community when it is proven ( I think) many will reoffend.
 
The community service system seems to be a joke and a waste of money too. They come and do some unpaid work at the local community centre garden and around the wee pitch.

A van arrives at 10am. 2 supervisors, 2 to 4 people, and they do the same work i could have done alone in the same time.
 
Jack said:
Aye, you're being a bit simplistic 😆 IMO.

Who deserves to be in the pokey?

A wifey, who after years of domestic abuse murders her husband. Chances of reoffending nil.

Someone with a total disregard for the law who, for example, among other things racks up drink driving offence after drink driving offence.

Given, at the end of the day, everything comes down to money.

AI Overview. The average cost to keep someone in prison in Scotland is approximately £47,140 to £52,260 per year.

Does the seriousness of the crime justify spending £50k a year on them keeping them locked up or could less money be spent in other ways that would protect the public and maybe do the criminals some good?
Click to expand...
Good points Jack.
 
If you are a danger to the society, then you shouldn't be released. I think that's fairly obvious - but let's take a recent high profile example like Peter Murrell. Is he a danger to the public, no, but should there be some kind of punishment - obviously yes.

So here's a really simple equation based on the central problem of prison space being a limited resource.

You have to link the prison space available for non dangerous prisoners to the amount of non dangerous prisoners and their sentences. That's a simple obvious course of action but flies against the real world where non dangerous prisoners are sentenced without taking account of the space available.

Jack said:
A big problem for Scotland, England and Wales is that the early released criminals need tagged.

G4S have responsibility for that in all locations because some idiots thought it would be a good idea to privatise what should be public services.

As a private company their responsibility is to their shareholders not the public or their safety.

A TV documentary not so long ago did an in depth investigation into G4S and in particular their criminal tagging services.

Too long, didn't watch 😑

The upshot, at time of filming, was more that 4,000 criminals were walking the streets of England waiting on a tag to be fitted; murders, rapists among them.

G4S didn't have the staffing numbers required and many of the staff were not properly trained. One wee lassie was sent out, on her own, to tag a violent rapist! Great idea thought nobody but G4S.

Some European countries have a decent system of keeping low level criminals in what is basically a hostel. The criminals are allowed to go to work but need to be back soon after they finish. That might even include going to their home to have tea with the family sort of thing, memory a bit hazy there.

Those that have jobs are able to keep them. I'm fairly sure those that don't have jobs do the sort of stuff suggested.

The torys were bragging about building thousands of prisoner places in the prisons estate (England). What they don't mention is, that due to no investment in the prisons estate previously the older prisons had to close. The net increase was something like 50 more places during the tory incompetence years.

Politicians, have for a long time, seen the average number of prisoners increase year on year; they dream up stuff that sees criminals in jails more often and longer but didn't build enough jail space to cope.

Barlinnie was hovering around capacity over the years I was a regular there, that was over 30 years ago and the replacement is still 2 years away.

We need a complete overhaul of the systems and that starts with stuff that will stop (ambitious) criminals being criminals in the first place, right back to the increasingly anti social society we're sliding into.
Click to expand...
 
Th problem is that we send far too many people to prison.
More than any other country in Europe.
People who are a danger to society, murderers, rapists, convicted paedophiles etc should serve their full sentence and be reviewed at the end of it to see if they can safely be released back into society. Many of them won't be ready to be released and should then serve their full sentence, but that should be looked at on a case by case basis.
Nobody should be in prison on remand, you should only be in jail if you have been convicted of a serious crime and are a danger to society.
 
Two Headed Boy said:
I'd say the wifey wasn't a danger to the community and the repeat offender was. On the surface, you'd be inclined to say she'd be up for early release and he'd likely need to demonstrate a serious attempt at rehabilitation before being considered.

In all seriousness though, I get that it would be more nuanced than I could summarise in a post on here.

That said, I'd stand by the guiding principle of keeping the wider community safe. As someone with more experience of the system, do you think that is being achieved just now? It certainly doesn't feel like it.
Click to expand...
I had experience of the prisons in the 1990s. There's a whole bundle of stuff has changed since then policy wise I'd imagine although the human side will be about the same.

Given there's very few prisoners escape from jail they're doing their job in that respect.
Greenmachine said:
Th problem is that we send far too many people to prison.
More than any other country in Europe.
People who are a danger to society, murderers, rapists, convicted paedophiles etc should serve their full sentence and be reviewed at the end of it to see if they can safely be released back into society. Many of them won't be ready to be released and should then serve their full sentence, but that should be looked at on a case by case basis.
Nobody should be in prison on remand, you should only be in jail if you have been convicted of a serious crime and are a danger to society.
Click to expand...
While I agree with most of that there are a huge number of cases where criminals should be on remand, too many just continue their life of crime.

This *&*^ is today's example.

www.bbc.co.uk

Simon Levy: Serial sex offender who murdered two women given whole life prison sentence

Police, prosecutors and courts made a series of disastrous decisions that had left Simon Levy free. Today's sentence means he'll spend the rest of his life in prison.
www.bbc.co.uk www.bbc.co.uk
 
paigntonhibby said:
There’s over 10000 foreign citizens in jail in England and wales, surely some of them could be released and deported tout suite
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That's the Reform policy.

Except that it's already happening and has been happening since before I worked in the system.

There is scope to send foreign prisoners to their own countries to serve their sentence in their own country.

Abdelbaset al-Megrahi is probably among the more infamous. It received global coverage for long enough. I'm surprised oor Nige was ignorant of this, he was surely aware?

There are criteria that must be satisfied at both ends and we don't have agreements with some countries. It also takes quite a while to sort out.

Reform could have just used Google 😆

Foreign Offender Returns and Statistics

Annual FNO Removals: Approximately 5,600 foreign national criminals are deported or transferred out of the UK annually.

Total Border Returns: General enforced and voluntary returns from the UK stand at around 39,000 per year.

Eligible Population: Estimates indicate over 10,000 foreign-citizen offenders exist within British jails, with more than 6,000 formally meeting criteria for removal.

Barriers to Transfer: Obstacles like lack of documentation, missing reciprocal agreements, or prisoner appeals often slow down wide-scale repatriation.
 
Jack said:
That's the Reform policy.

Except that it's already happening and has been happening since before I worked in the system.

There is scope to send foreign prisoners to their own countries to serve their sentence in their own country.

Abdelbaset al-Megrahi is probably among the more infamous. It received global coverage for long enough. I'm surprised oor Nige was ignorant of this, he was surely aware?

There are criteria that must be satisfied at both ends and we don't have agreements with some countries. It also takes quite a while to sort out.

Reform could have just used Google 😆

Foreign Offender Returns and Statistics

Annual FNO Removals: Approximately 5,600 foreign national criminals are deported or transferred out of the UK annually.

Total Border Returns: General enforced and voluntary returns from the UK stand at around 39,000 per year.

Eligible Population: Estimates indicate over 10,000 foreign-citizen offenders exist within British jails, with more than 6,000 formally meeting criteria for removal.

Barriers to Transfer: Obstacles like lack of documentation, missing reciprocal agreements, or prisoner appeals often slow down wide-scale repatriation.
Click to expand...

Pesky facts are no use to anyone.
 
Any countries that refuse to take their own criminals back should have any financial aid they might be getting from the UK stopped.
Thers talk that for those difficult to get rid of prison space could be hired in places like el salvador with entry back to the UK prohibited after their sentence
 
paigntonhibby said:
Any countries that refuse to take their own criminals back should have any financial aid they might be getting from the UK stopped.
Thers talk that for those difficult to get rid of prison space could be hired in places like el salvador with entry back to the UK prohibited after their sentence
Click to expand...
Yeah, apparently already being looked at and other restrictions like visas and access to airspace. Pakistan only recently had access to UK airspace restored but it doesn't look good for them longterm.

I'm sure Farage mentioned El Salvador recently as a proposal. El Salvador hadn't heard anything about it and basically laughed.
 
paigntonhibby said:
Any countries that refuse to take their own criminals back should have any financial aid they might be getting from the UK stopped.
Thers talk that for those difficult to get rid of prison space could be hired in places like el salvador with entry back to the UK prohibited after their sentence
Click to expand...

We'd likely have to take back some of our miscreants currently in foreign jails....... hopefully not "one in one out" or what's the point?
 
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