Scottish justice at a crossroads: Prison, policy, and the need for decarceration
Published: 6 May 2026
6 May 2026: University of Glasgow academics examine decarceration in Scotland, writing that without confronting the limits of punishment, decarceration will remain politically fragile. Ahead of a new parliamentary term, they look at how feasible decarceration might be and how the parties talk about it in their manifestos.
6 May 2026: University of Glasgow academics examine decarceration in Scotland, writing that without confronting the limits of punishment, decarceration will remain politically fragile. Ahead of a new parliamentary term, they look at how feasible decarceration might be and how the parties talk about it in their manifestos.
Blog by Dr Louise Kennefick, Dr Marguerite Schinkel, Dr Janos Szakolczai
Reckoning with the road not taken
Eighteen years ago, the McLeish Commission warned that Scottish justice stood at a crossroads. Their report set out a stark choice: act to build a better future, or allow the justice system to drift into decline, leading to prison overcrowding, low morale, public distrust, and another generation of vulnerable young people trapped in the prison cycle.
The McLeish report sounded a warning that Scotland failed to heed, with devastating results. Our imprisonment rates are now among the highest in Western Europe, with 8,455 people in custody as of April 2026, rising since 2023, despite record-low crime rates. The overuse of custody has driven overcrowding within a struggling prison estate, fuelling poor conditions, violence, mental health issues, substance misuse, and a staffing crisis. Meanwhile, the new HMP Glasgow is set to cost taxpayers £1 billion pounds (roughly £340 each), on top of the £50,000 per prison place annually, to sustain a system still unproven in reducing reoffending or improving public safety. The next Scottish Government will once again stand at the crossroads, but this time the situation is more dire. If it chooses a positive path, it must confront a justice system in crisis and act to protect the public while reducing reoffending in a sustainable way.
A decarceration strategy for Scotland?
In response to this emergency, the Scottish Sentencing and Penal Policy Commission was established in 2025 to review custodial and community-based sanctions, and recommend ways to reduce (re)offending. Its report, Justice that Works, calls for a decarceration strategy, including prohibiting most custodial sentences under 12 months and extending the presumption against short sentences to 24 months.
The report offers little detail on what a decarceration plan might involve, but marks it as a priority for the next government. This leaves a pressing question: even if decarceration (understood as reducing the number of people in custody) is a suitable strategy to pursue according to criminological evidence, how feasible is it in the current socio-political climate?
Victim/survivor and public concerns
Political and public discourse is still driven by punitive, “lock ‘em up” rhetoric, based on assumptions about what the public and victims/survivors want. Yet, evidence shows these views to be more nuanced. Victims/survivors do not always seek the harshest sentences, and such assumptions can contribute to a system that fails them. What both victims/survivors and the public want, however, is safety through reduced reoffending.
Reducing reoffending
Evidence strongly challenges the assumption that more prison means less crime. Short custodial sentences are associated with higher reconviction rates, while community sanctions are often more effective at reducing reoffending, and cost less. Crucially, however, they also create greater scope for rehabilitation, restoration, and reintegration.
Decarceration, then, requires reframing punishment as a spectrum, rather than a binary choice between prison and impunity, ranging from enhancement of community resources and justice reinvestment, to unpaid work, community supervision and, where necessary for public safety, imprisonment. However, it is important to note that the effectiveness of such an approach depends on addressing the chronic underfunding of community sanctions, (including issues around workforce capacity, increasing complex needs of those subject to such orders, and significant delays in finding suitable placements), to ensure these measures are viable and accessible.
Being honest about punishment
Relatedly, there is a need for greater honesty about the failure of prison as a punishment. The strength of the evidence against its effectiveness suggests that the persistence of the call for more prison runs deeper. Imprisonment is widely regarded as the only “serious” punishment, but this is misleading. Research shows that community-based sanctions (like unpaid work, supervision, and restrictions/conditions) are often experienced as punitive.
Further, political resistance to decarceration often assumes that prison is indispensable. However, acknowledging its limits, the scale of unpunished harm, and its disproportionate impact on deprived communities, opens space for a different conversation, one that highlights the need for systemic, preventative, and social responses, rather than reliance on prison. Decarceration is not about doing less, but about redistributing how society responds to harm.
Conclusion
Scotland now faces a clear choice: continued prison expansion, as advocated for in the Scottish Conservative’s, SNP and Reform manifestos, or a coherent decarceration strategy, which might include a public health approach to Violence Against Women and Girls as envisioned by Scottish Labour, a Citizen’s Assembly on Justice Reform proposed by the Scottish Greens, or investing in community sentences and early intervention by the SNP. Without confronting the limits of punishment, decarceration will remain politically fragile. A sustainable plan requires sentencing reform and the advancement of community sanctions, in addition to an honest public dialogue on the limitations of our current approaches to punishment that allows us to reshape how we understand justice.
In eighteen years, will we be lamenting the road not taken and ignored warnings from the Scottish Sentencing and Penal Policy Commission? Or will we look back and see that reform and justice prevailed?
Authors
Dr Louise Kennefick, Senior Lecturer in Criminal Law
Dr Marguerite Schinkel, Senior Lecturer in Criminology
Dr Janos Szakolczai, Lecturer in Criminology
First published: 6 May 2026