 Pleas to imprison more criminals have come under fire |
Scotland's courts should be jailing more people, the Conservative Party's justice spokeswoman has claimed. Margaret Mitchell said the number of inmates should be measured against the amount of crime committed.
She said a study by the party showed Scotland jailed proportionately fewer criminals than other European nations with a lower offending rate.
The figures were dismissed as being "fundamentally flawed" by the Scottish Executive.
Scotland already jails a larger part of its population than almost any other country in Western Europe.
The Tories' research was based on official figures from as far back as 1950.
They insisted the party's investigation proved "unequivocally" that the crime rate was at its lowest when the number of people sent to jail was high.
Ms Mitchell said Scotland should "take lessons" from Spain and Ireland where, she claimed, respectively four times and three times more people were jailed relative to recorded crime.
"Unsurprisingly, the deterrent is such that crimes per capita in both Ireland and Spain is around a quarter of the level here," she said.
"The new evidence that we have unveiled makes the case even more starkly. More than 50 years of data show clearly that when the prison rate is higher, the crime rate is lower."
Ms Mitchell went on: "Prison does work. But instead of acting upon this overwhelming evidence, the Scottish government wants to send even fewer criminals to jail.
"It also wants to let them out after half their sentence when they get there."
But a Scottish Executive spokeswoman said: "Correct analysis of the data does not support the Conservatives' claims.
"The reality is that when prisoner rates per 100,000 population are high, so are crime rates."
She added: "The Conservative analysis is fundamentally flawed because the prisoner rates used are rates per 1,000 crimes - these will automatically be higher if the crime figures are low."
The Scottish National Party also poured scorn on the Tories.
Justice spokesman Kenny MacAskill said: "It was their failed policies of the 1980s that led to the poverty and drug problems that are a scar on so many Scottish communities and led to high instances of crime in these areas."
He continued: "Scots are no more disposed to criminality than any other nation, yet we still have one of the highest imprisonment rates in Western Europe.
"The Tories' solution of simply locking more people up is fundamentally flawed, as the high levels of re-offending in Scotland show."
Conservatives also renewed their call for an end to the automatic early release of prisoners, now being reviewed by the Sentencing Commission.
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More than 50 years of data show clearly that when the prison rate is higher, the crime rate is lower
