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The Citizen Participation and Public Petitions Team
Under consideration PE2171: Stop the use of prisons for punishment and focus them on public protection
Calling on the Scottish Parliament to urge the Scottish Government to stop the use of prisons for punishment and deterrence, and only use them for public protection purposes, in order to reduce the pressure on the prison service and allow more focus on rehabilitation, thereby ensuring that those who pose the greatest risk are jailed, whilst allowing those who pose less of a risk to be given community orders, fines and potentially lifelong driving bans.
Background information
Our prison service is running at almost full capacity. We need to rethink who we jail and why. We know that using prison as a deterrence is not effective. We have to go back to the criminal law doctrines of actus reus and mens rea in establishing when prison is most needed. In most cases of mens rea being absent, prison is of little value. This is especially true of deaths caused by driving, whereby there was no intent to cause injury or death, and the standard of driving would not be deemed by the average person of similar ability and experience to lead to death.
Cases such as these pose little threat to the wider public. Thus prison is not being used for public safety. All we are doing is causing people to lose their homes and jobs thus creating bigger issues of unemployment and extra pressure on already stretched housing markets.
I urge the government to consider using prison as a very last resort in all circumstances.
10 signatures
This petition is now under consideration
Click here for further information about the consideration of this petition.