A cup of tea and blether with former First Minister Henry McLeish after Lesley Riddoch’s radio show the other week got me thinking.

Henry chairs up the Scottish Government’s Prisons Commission. His point was that in many respects all we have done as a society is to try and manage repeat offenders. Park them in a prison and park them in a ghetto in-between periods of incarceration.

I think that’s true. There has to a better solution say the Scottish Prisons Commission. Simply locking people up, letting them out, and then locking them up again in an endless cycle may provide respite for communities, but it is costly and ultimately unsuccessful as regards rehabilitation.

The Scottish Government’s solution is to ‘scrap’ prisons sentences for less than six months. I don’t buy this idea. Kenny MacAskill’s solution is for ‘tough community sentences’. Essentially, this represents the same endless sentencing cycle with nice savings for the taxpayer at the cost of less respite for communities.

If we are honest the fact a child grows up with maybe one or two generation of parents who have never worked and have no aspiration in life creates a poverty of opportunity for that child. If the parents are junkies, steal and rob, or get out of their face every day and night, how hard is it for a child to break out of that environment?

While citizens must take full responsibility for their actions, politicians and civil servants need to take full responsibility for pepetuating social divides, and creating the socio-economic conditions which breeds a poverty of opportunity for all too many of our neighbours.

All of this makes me think our biggest efforts must be directed towards youth and young offenders in our most deprived communities.

The correlation between crime and poverty is well recognised. People living in areas of deprivation are two and half times more likely to be the victim of a crime than the average rate for Scotland. Domestic abuse is twice as prevalent among those on low incomes. While male prisoners are four times as likely to come from areas of poverty and inequality.

Most people who suffer financial hardship or social injustice don’t turn to crime. I’ve never practised at the criminal bar but am aware, no doubt like you, that many criminal defence firms have ‘regular’ clients or entire families of clients capable of generating enough work to keep them busy in perpetuity. Recidivism is rife from youth into adulthood in Scotland. We have multiple pockets of repeat multiple offending.

And yet we invest vast sums of public money into an industry which manages the symptoms of that offending; fire fights with it if you will. Why don’t we divert some of those resources to extinguish some of the fires? Holistic rehabilitation.

For example, the Scottish Government could pilot a scheme whereby sheriffs could offer convicted young offenders the chance to escape jail subject to curfew terms, and the successful participation in a co-ordinated scheme personal to them.

A comprehsive solution might entail addiction services, anger management, social skills, and critically, the opportunity to learn a trade or skill, or gain educational qualifications, with placements with employers. The opportunity to get a job and have a decent life, are essentials for human dignity.

How can young offenders respect other people and their own community when they don’t respect themselves?

A holsitic rehabilitation service would not be cheap, but once you factor in the savings from prevented crime, savings from the industry of criminal justice, and the avoidance of human misery, the arithmetic is a no brainer.

Mike