What a tumultuous year for justice, with more to come

This is my latest column, in today's Scotsman (23rd December 2025).

The Chief Constable recently laid out the start consequences for Police Scotland of a funding deficit, so it's impossible to claim we were not warned.  

It’s been a busy year for the Justice Column in this esteemed publication, and a very diverse one.  We have covered Cyber Crime, the long and weary public inquiry into the death of Sheku Bayoh as well as The Sandy Peggie Tribunal.

Then there was President Trumps visit to Scotland, Drug Deaths, priorities in policing, gang wars, traffic congestion, proceeds of crime, feral youth, and public protest.  And just to prove we cast our net wide, we have also discussed potholes in our roads, ill-considered Public Inquiries, and of course Police and Public Service Finance. 

If this last topic, finance and resources for policing seems a rather dry, and recurring theme then I plead guilty. All columnists have their hobby horses, and for me it’s personal. I was a police detective and a senior officer throughout the 1980s and 90s when police forces struggled to build their funding to a reasonable level.  

Success allowed us to invest in ground breaking forensic techniques that were crucial in solving the most dreadful crimes. It allowed us to harness the power of the latest powerful computers that helped us drive down crime to record low levels. I was an eye witness to that turning point in professional improvement, so it is particularly galling to see these advances in danger of slipping away because of a gradual reduction in funding.  

If the life of public services often resembles a giant game of ‘Snakes & Ladders’, then as we head for another new year, and a January budget, our police service is sliding slowly down a snake. It’s of little comfort that policing is not alone, or that due to the mismanagement of our public finances, very few will get a step up the ladder in 2026. The Chief Constable recently laid out the stark consequences of a funding deficit. We cannot say we were not warned. 

So with that gloomy overview, what else might we expect in 2026?  More of the same I suspect, but for the first five months we will be subjected to election fever leading up to the May Scottish Parliamentary Elections. With a growing number of parties seeking election and increasing paranoia among politicians we can expect determined attempts to damage their opponents. We have already seen allegations about the schoolboy remarks of one-party leader, watch out for the key smear trigger words, Racist, Misogynist, Fascist and even Nazi to reoccur. I just hope Police Scotland can firmly resist being weaponised, and dragged into investigating spurious allegations made only for political purposes. 

On a more positive note, we will surely see advances in technology which, if we can afford them, will help prevent and detect crime. I couldn’t help but smile when I saw the predictable protests against the introduction of new facial recognition technology. They were exactly the same arguments that were raised when fingerprinting was developed in the 19th century, when CCTV was introduced in the 70s, and when DNA came on line in the 90s. Nonsense of course, with the proper safeguards all these advances have done as much to protect the innocent as they have to convict the guilty. 

So, there’s a lot to look forward to in '26, but in the meantime as you sit in comfort this Christmas, spare a thought and raise a glass to the emergency workers out there, pounding the beat or working the wards. Despite the politics and the high finance, they just get on with the job of public service 24 hours a day.