The past few days have been a bad day for Scottish justice. In various press interviews and front pages over the weekend and today, the @ScotTories claim moves to a) imagine a Scotland in which imprisonment (particularly short-term) is used less, is ‘soft justice’ 1/

or in which measures required to deal with the aftermath of a pandemic (specifically the possibility of an amnesty for the backlog of unpaid work) is also ‘soft justice’. They claim to be speaking ‘on behalf of victims’. 2/

Every party in Scotland, bar one, agrees there is a need to be bold and move Scottish justice in a different direction, however, this one dissenting voice makes the body politic risk averse, not least in the run up to May 21. 3/

That this party claims to be speaking ‘on behalf of victims’ is questionable, who says victims always want tougher punishment? What most victims want is to be heard, treated well, and for there to be less crime in the future, and the evidence shows what works and what does not 4/

Furthermore, community penalties are still punishment and are experienced as such by those subject to them. If victims feel afraid or need respite for a short period of time, there are options other than custody which enable this such as GPS EM technology. 5/

What we as society think of as an appropriate ‘level’ of punishment can changes depending on context. What some people might think of as an appropriate sentence for crime x, can completely change, depending on the public and media debate around an issue. 6/

As it can change in one direction, so can it another. If everyone in politics wants a ‘better’ Scotland, please can we pull together, work together, listen to each other, and not be divisive for short term political expediency? We can and should do better. 7/