Justice is served by rehabilitation, not punishment

New statistics have been published on Scotland’s crime rates and reconviction rates. They show deep misunderstandings of the structural issues that lead to both, and mean that the politicians who don’t or don’t want to understand them are having entirely the wrong debate about what to do about them.

Overall crime rates in Scotland have been rising in the past few years and have now returned to levels last seen a decade ago. The patterns of crimes have been changing, though.

The very most serious violent crimes of assault and murder are lower than they were in 2016, as are crimes like vandalism, fire-raising, housebreaking or the theft of vehicles. However, sexual crimes have increased across almost all categories, and there has been a very sharp rise in shoplifting and fraud (the increase in shoplifting alone more than outweighs what would have otherwise been an overall decrease in recorded crime in Scotland between 2016 and 2025).

The reasons are complex but point to a change in the structure of shops – with fewer staff and higher levels of automation – as much as it does poverty and stress, increasing rates of theft. However, deeper investigation reveals that much of the increase in the recording of shoplifting crimes may be down to the police making it easier to report the crimes that were otherwise going unreported.

More concerning are the statistics around reconviction rates. This is one of the key measures of a functioning justice system, as it entirely makes the difference between one that responds to crime with punishment and one that responds to crime with rehabilitation. The difference between someone making a mistake and then being able to repair the damage they caused and contribute to society again, and someone whose mistake spirals them into a life that no one would choose but which they cannot escape from, to their and society’s greater cost.

The rate of reconviction in Scotland is around 39% within two years of a previous conviction and 27% overall - more than one in four offenders released from the justice system will be reconvicted of another crime at some point in their life, and about two in five will be reconvicted within two years. This rate has come down steadily over the course of the 21st century – apart from a bump upwards during and after the Covid lockdowns – and is lower than some of our neighbouring countries (30% in England, for instance) but remains substantially higher than leaders in the field of justice like Norway, where two-year reconviction rates are less than 20%.

The largest point of difference between Scotland and Norway is our attitude towards rehabilitation within prison, and this is the most striking when comparing reconviction rates to length of sentence. In Scotland, reconviction rates are highest for short-term prisoners who effectively bounce in and out of the system before the insufficient attempts to rehabilitate have time to bed in. Longer incarceration generally means less chance of returning. This is one of the driving motivations behind the push to eliminate short prison sentences in Scotland.

In Norway, the focus on immediate rehabilitation has done the opposite – reducing the need for long incarceration, with more than 90% of sentences being for less than a year.

This is a surprising statistic and should be the focus of debates around justice in Scotland. There are two very different approaches to rehabilitation going on – one that seeks to prevent short prison sentences due to an effective admission that the system is primarily about segregation and punishment more than rehabilitation, and another that seeks to prevent long incarceration because the system is designed to repair damage and turn criminals into “good neighbours”.

This debate is currently entirely absent in Scotland, with the main political focus being on creating more cells to rack and stack criminals or on misunderstanding the reasons behind their crimes. This is a complex issue. It deserves much more nuanced discussions. And, perhaps, a few lessons from neighbours who are clearly seeing the benefit of the results of theirs.