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Politicians with crocodile tears for lives lost in prison must do some reflecting

13 8
20.01.2025

IN August 2017, Katie Allan drove her car while under the influence of alcohol, lost control, mounted a pavement and struck a pedestrian. She pled guilty to causing serious injury by dangerous driving and drink driving and was sentenced to 16 months’ imprisonment. She died by her own hand in Polmont Young Offenders Institution almost three months later. She was 21.

On October 3, 2018, William Brown walked into a Glasgow police station with a knife. He was arrested, charged and appeared in court. Bail was opposed and he was remanded in custody. No beds were available at secure units, so he was taken to Polmont. William also took his own life. He was 16.

These are just some of the sad circumstances behind a fatal accident inquiry published last week. Sheriff Simon Collins KC found there were “reasonable precautions by which both deaths might realistically have been avoided” and that there were “systemic failures contributing to the deaths” of these two people in Polmont.

These findings have been given an understandably sympathetic hearing in the Scottish media, while prison authorities have faced significant criticism, including suggestions these two young people were effectively “killed by the justice system”.

I’m struck by how selective and precarious the sympathetic narrative around these two tragic cases feels this week, and how gingerly reactions to these cases are dancing around the wider structural issues the families have had in their sights from the beginning.

The Scottish Sentencing Council was founded in 2015. Established to promote transparency and consistency in sentencing policy, the judge-led body has produced four authoritative guidelines so far on everything from the general principles and purposes of sentencing, to directions to judges on how to handle specific crimes.

Perhaps the most high-profile and controversial of the guidelines produced so far directs the courts on how to sentence young people. The guideline applies to anyone aged under 25 on conviction. They say that “rehabilitation” must be a primary consideration for the courts in dealing with youngsters and that “a custodial sentence should only be imposed on a young person when the court is satisfied that no other sentence is appropriate”.

This difference in approach reflects the........

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