Cutting sentences should only be for good behaviour

This is the subject of my latest Scotsman column, published in today's newspaper (18th August 2026).

Reductions in prison sentences should only be for good behaviour - not a matter of right. 

Since time immemorial prison governors have used incentives to keep order and to encourage rehabilitation.  All prisons are micro societies with their own pecking orders and hierarchies. Plum jobs and privileges are given to inmates who behave, show contrition, or participate in programmes to improve literacy or drug/ alcohol recovery.

Some long-term prisoners even achieve Trustee status, helping to run the kitchens, libraries, even being allowed weekends leave - on trust. And early release, time off for good behaviour, was the ultimate reward for good conduct, and the most powerful tool in the hands of prison governors, whose recommendation counted for much. 

That all changed when the government introduced The Sentencing Act 2026, a thoughtless piece of legislation which established a statutory early release scheme half way through most prison sentences.  It was done for expediency of course, a panic move to prevent our prisons being swamped, but at a stroke it made a nonsense of sentencing policy, why pass a ten year sentence when you mean five, and it removed a powerful method of control and inventive. 

It was a sticking plaster to cover a gaping wound, a short-term expedient only that in the long term is likely to make matters worse. 

This sorry state of affairs is entirely self-inflicted. The Criminal Justice System, Police, Courts, Social Work / Probation, and our Prisons are all co-dependent, interlocked components of one machine.  And for the last decade or more that machine has been slowly run down, at the back of the queue when the funding is allocated, starved of people and the infrastructure necessary to do the job. 

Now the cracks are beginning to show and the consequences are there for all to see. Reduced numbers of police officers under strain, suffering increasing ill health, and making mistakes as they scramble to keep up. Courts closed with extra strain on those remaining, and ridiculously long trial dates. A dangerous lack of criminal justice social workers, struggling to try to prevent reoffending. And of course, our prisons. 

Now with new scientific techniques leading to more convictions for both current and historic crimes, our crumbling prison estate could never be expected to cope. If revenue budgets, that pay the wages, have been cut, Capital budgets, that repair buildings, have been lamentable, hence the closed police stations, and old prisons that cannot even protect themselves against smuggling drones let alone build or renovate new accommodation. Nor is there space to invest in tough community sentences, the only real alternative to prison. 

There is little evidence that prisons do much good other than to keep some dangerous criminals of the streets for a while.  Very few come out better than they went in, but if there is to be any meaningful rehabilitation prison governors must be given the tools they need to incentivise.  Time Off, should be for good behaviour only and then only for certain classes of prisoner. 

And in the long term our governments on both sides of the border should stop rearranging deck chairs, form a long-term evidence-based plan for meaningful alternatives to prison - and stick to it.