Okay, I’ll admit it – I do not have a balanced view on prisons. There you go, I said it.

From my position, they are cruel, expensive, counter-productive and I see a very strong argument for the abolition of prisons in their current form. I don’t see any proper justification for current practice other than “but we’ve always had prisons” or “but what would we do with criminals?”

I suspect the actual reason that we have prisons today is because we’ve “always had them” but that, of course, is a rubbish argument. Just because something has always been done this way doesn’t mean it should continue like that.

Anyway, I don’t intend to launch my manifesto for reform of our approach to criminality. What I want to write about is the position from which I have formed my opinions.

Perspective is really important to be aware of and can really colour feelings. I have seen so much vile behaviour by staff and so many damaged families. I have seen the effect of warehousing criminals together in one place without any efforts to rehabilitate them. It seems utterly pointless with the net value of damaging society rather than creating a safer Scotland.

However, I am seeing it with the grinding injustice which gnaws away at me constantly and, while what I say is true (about the cruelty, pointlessness and lack of rehabilitation), my position is that of being in the wrong place or, to put it another way, if I was a cat living in a dog home, I’m pretty sure I’d think it was a terrible place.

I have been the victim of crime, fraud and perjury, so I can understand the hurt that comes from crime. However, I do think we need to be really careful about feelings of vengeance. It seems, from my perspective, that too much of our response to criminal behaviour is based on vengeance.

I wonder, however, what I would feel if I was not in this position, if I had not had this experience, would I feel the same? I believe I would have an assumption that prisons rehabilitate people so I would want a criminal to go to prison. I wouldn’t question the criminal justice system and would still have faith in lawyers and the police. I would still have the belief that courts establish the truth and I wouldn’t really want to think about it, preferring to forget and ignore what actually happens behind prison walls. This, I believe, is the essence of what is wrong with prisons at the moment – nobody really has a balanced perspective.

The people who we trust to lead us, our elected representatives, are the ones who should have the required balance but the truth is that they only really care about winning the next election. Therefore, it seems we are destined to continue to have a criminal justice system which fails victims, offenders and wider society.

NaN.