I wrote this more than 4 years ago; some predictions were right and some praise misplaced.

The green green grass of home

Little is more precious than a comfortable, safe home, but for too long our prisons have mainly been populated by those deprived of such. Smart researchers say that the chances of becoming imprisoned increase exponentially with experience of abuse, family breakdown, the care environment, or when, as the result of any such haphazard events or mishaps, our existences descend into alcoholism or drug misuse. Naturally poverty and deprivation are staging posts on the way to the BarL just as surely as money, power and Eton pave the way to Number 10 or 11.

Professional duties require that the identities of those of whom I speak have been confuddled, but the core remains accurate. Think of a teenaged youth, parents separated leaving grandparents to pick up the pieces. It’s not so hard to get in with the wrong crowd, deface oneself with a couple of home made tattoos, learn how to knock back the drink with the bravado of the Jock, then realisation dawns of the ability to shoplift for Scotland with apparent impunity and a dogged, imagined cloak of invisibility. Theft and sale of bottles of Benylin, razor blades, jars of coffee. Picture then a scabby police cell, with a striped flock mattress, stinking to high heaven, perched upon a wooden block, racks of minging woollen blankets, not dissimilar to those featuring in H blocks, moving all by themselves. A toilet devoid of lid or seat, with the flush outside in the corridor, to be operated by the police officer upon his occasional check. No free sanitary provisions, television,  iPad or phone and believe you me you wouldn’t be happy dining on the fare available there. That’s my baptism as a trainee lawyer in central Scotland three decades ago.

Consider the elderly, shuffling and bowed lady, incarcerated and institutionalised periodically throughout her life, never having a stable, happy home for even a few months at a time, rarely having her own front door, let alone a secure, guaranteed income, deprived of the warmth of a quiet, private hearth; little wonder her descent by weary stages through alcoholism to a dreadful addiction to meths; she could remove from the insides of her cheeks a substance that resembled chewing gum. She’d have been a victim of dreadful abuse as a child and in her adult years; the manner in which our society treated her, over 50 odd years, comprised abuse of the basest type. Her world was horror and her country nailed her to the wall.

I knew a young man, not a client of mine, convicted of a murder he did not commit. He is dead now. During his trial, the presiding Judge found it impossible to believe that our man had to share a pair of trainers with his flatmate. I found it impossible to believe that in this land of plenty that is how our people have been required to survive, but I know that this is true. Oil rigs and food banks, was ever a country so cursed?

And let us not forget the chicken run; wrong to say so but probably almost the only use to which the Daily Record might nowadays be put. Picture that scene. If you were a fellow from Glasgow or Edinburgh you’d be reasonably safe; but, were you a teuchter from that well known Heilan Hame in Clackmannanshire, your number was up. Now, you might laugh, but what if the prisoner was your son, brother, friend, neighbour? 

I  started to write this thinking of days of yore, believing that  in Scotland, we’re creating a new dawn with presumptions against short sentences, because we know they don’t work; we favour restorative justice and community based disposals. We’re talking like civilised, knowledgeable adults about helping people to heal from the damage of adverse childhood experiences; we’re beginning to say that drug addiction, as well as alcoholism, is an illness, a curse, not of itself a crime. We’re hoping that wherever possible, practical and safe, women, mothers, won’t be locked up any more. Children won’t go into ‘care’ because the Mums aren’t around. And this great progress has come about in large measure as the result of policies proposed or supported by the SNP, there being a recognition that social justice is key to repairing the neglect our country endured at least for decades, including those days when Jack McConnell sent a few million pounds in used fivers back to Westminster because he couldn’t find anything to spend it upon. A couple of hospitals, some schools, maybe a handful of health and leisure centres, and Uni fees for a few thousand youngsters would have been a good start. But I digress a little. It’s unavoidable sometimes.

In olden days we used to hang them high, then we transported those who stole a loaf or a sheep, then we amputated families by imposing long prison sentences so children grew up not knowing their parents; but thankfully now we are starting to teach how to heal, though we’re not quite there yet. But a warning –  if we don’t rediscover the national spine very soon indeed, I predict a rapid descent into oblivion. Scotland’s great strides forwards onto a world stage and her securing priorities in health, education, a respect agenda in welfare, these and more will be jeopardised if we lie down and permit  Westminster to  park its boot firmly upon our neck again in a few short months. 

Thirled to that Westminster master, we continue to punish those who are poor, for the sin of being poor. I know this, because the theft of food, subsistence crime is the politically correct term, continues to be prosecuted. Sheriffs ask to know why Universal Credit is paid late, in arrears, and at a mindbogglingly low rate. Of course after several weeks of living on fresh air, using up food bank vouchers, desperation, despair and hopelessness become ingrained and I would imagine that the comparative solace of a prison cell and three square a day would comprise welcome respite for many. I’d hopes these days were consigned to the past. However, it is now known that when we ‘Brexit’ martial law is a distinct possibility. Are we then going to be subjected to curfews imposed by the military? Will soldiers ration our food shopping and patrol empty supermarkets? Will there be barbed wire around Trevelyan’s cornfields ? Will they be secured by men in camouflage gear with painted faces, bandannas and chanting, like Sammy Wilson did in the Commons today, that we should ‘get to the chippy?’ It’s not so far removed from reality to think of prison ships in the bay these days given that they had prison ships in England in the 1970s and again in the late 1990s – are the hairs on the back of your neck up on end yet?

When we are beginning to starve, and the stockpiles those of us wealthy enough to create have dwindled, or the poorest are so hungry that they’re looting, stealing, ransacking, are we all going to jail or to hell? Blue passports, eh? Taking back control? 

And if there is martial law, will there be lists of undesirables to be rounded up and interned? Will the troops start to clear the streets of the homeless and the rough sleepers, like they do for Royal weddings? Will there be bonfires of belongings of those deemed less worthy? Will vagrancy be a criminal offence again? Punishable by hard labour? Am I already deemed a subversive? Are you?

Will our Scottish Parliament, our Scottish Government, exist for long after Brexit? Will those be suspended, like Stormont? Will our First Minister be under house arrest?  And will our jails, instead of becoming civilised places striving for rehabilitation, risk assessment and eventual re-integration become like the madhouses of old ? Populated by those who ought to be deemed political prisoners but who will yearn, like the Catalans do now, for international recognition and justice?

 Scotland cannot continue to gaze, like a coward,  upon a deaf, robotic jailor, a guard, a sad old padre, and four grey walls. There’s a whole world of opportunity, equality, hope and prosperity just beyond those gates – the solution is within our hearts, our minds and our grasp. It takes but one leap. The old home town will look the same, and to paraphrase the greatest of men, let us have faith in and harness Scotland’s hidden powers, the present’s theirs and all the past and the future will be ours! Alba gu brath!