Abolishing prisons in Scotland : a mad idea or a missed opportunity? |
Kate Nevens was laughed out of the room for suggesting Scotland abolish prisons. But before we all clutch the keys to the cells, it’s worth asking whether a pokey‑free future was really so mad after all, says Kevin McKenna.
A young Scottish Greens candidate has been mocked for seeking to abolish prisons. But who knows what might have happened if Scotland had adopted it.
I can't be alone in harbouring a measure of sympathy for Kate Nevens, the Scottish Greens candidate for Lothians East. Ms Nevens had made an admirable attempt to inject some zip into a rather pallid Holyrood election by campaigning to abolish prisons in Scotland.
It was an eye-catching and bold policy which - at a stroke - would have solved one of the country's most intractable problems: our chronically over-crowded prisons. Sadly, it was to be close, but no cigar for the brave election hopeful.
Ms Nevens was firmly told to zip it by Ross Greer, the Scottish Greens co-convenor who mouthed some pious epithets to the effect that there will always be some very violent people who need locked up. His party has previously expressed a preference for hosting some of these people in the women's prison estate.
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If sanctimony were to materialise and take human form it would look something like Mr Greer. He is George MacDonald Fraser’s Young Flashman to JK Rowling’s Harry Potter.
Ms Nevens has been roundly ridiculed for suggesting a pokey-free Scotland, yet, there are precedents. In 1381, when Wat Tyler led the Peasants Revolt in England, he thought they'd secured agreement from........