CATHY JAMIESON, Scotland’s Justice Minister, promised yesterday to cut the country’s “appalling” reoffending rate for criminals.

The Scottish Executive’s latest plan to tackle the problem includes a large expansion of non-custodial sentences. More burglars, petty thieves and car criminals would undergo community-based rehabilitation programmes. Prisoners nearing the end of their sentence could be allowed to spend the last part of it under new home detention curfews, with the extension of electronic tagging.

Plans have been ditched for a single correction agency to combine some Scottish Prison Service (SPS) and social work offender management roles. Ministers will, however, legally oblige the two sectors to work together to cut reoffending.

Ministers will also receive powers to intervene should the SPS or local authorities fail to improve reoffending rates, and key prison service decisions on new jails or major contracts will return to the Executive.

The series of measures, some of which will require legislation to come before the Parliament next year, were contained in a report entitled Scotland’s Criminal Justice Plan — Supporting Safer, Stronger Communities.

Scotland locks up more criminals as a proportion of its population than most other European countries, yet it also has one of the worst reoffending rates. At present six out of ten prisoners are reconvicted within two years of their release. Among under-21 males that rises to eight in ten.

Ms Jamieson acknowledged yesterday that victims of crime wanted to see some element of retribution. But she said community-based sentences were often better placed to challenge offenders’ behaviour than short prison sentences. They tackled underlying causes such as drug or alcohol misuse, she said.

“We have to recognise that when someone gets into that situation of offending we don’t want them to be doing it time and time again,” she said. “And I think victims of crime also expect us to try to put in place programmes that not only punish people, but that stop them doing it again. And that’s where, if you look at the figures, Scotland has a pretty appalling record in terms of reconviction rates and we have to do something about it.”

She dismissed Tory claims that the Executive was going soft on criminals and insisted that preventing and deterring crime was “the starting point for everything” that ministers did.

“We believe in serious time for serious crimes, like murder, rape, and class-A drug dealing,” she said. “But we also know that jail doesn’t work for minor offenders who only spend a few weeks in jail. And we can do more to turn those lives around by dealing with them in the community.”

The minister said that the home detention curfew, already available south of the border, could remove 350 people from Scotland’s overcrowded prisons — currently holding 6,600 inmates, with as many as 10,000 predicted in ten years.

But Annabel Goldie, the Scottish Tories’ justice spokeswoman, said that high reoffending rates showed the need for tougher sentencing and more effective rehabilitation programmes, as well as an end to automatic early release. She accused Ms Jamieson of “sending out entirely the wrong message” by pushing community-based sentencing.

Kenny MacAskill, the SNP justice spokesman, agreed that community-based programmes for offenders were often the most effective way of preventing reoffending, but said that more radical action was needed. “The real failure of the Executive is where they have failed to tackle the underlying causes of crime, namely poverty and inequality,” he said.

Labour’s coalition partners, the Liberal Democrats, and the Convention of Scottish Local Authorities (Cosla) welcomed the move to abandon the single correctional agency plans.

Margaret Smith, Lib Dem justice spokeswoman, said: “The minister has listened to our concerns and ensured that the focus is on taking real action to cut reoffending rather than clinging on to the hope that a new single organisation would cure all ills.”

Pat Watters, Cosla president, said: “Our aim in this process was the same as the Executive’s — to reduce Scotland’s horrendous reoffending rates — but we argued throughout that organisational change was not the way to do this.”

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