What do we want from our prison system: rehabilitation or punishment?

The National

07-05-2025

However, before we think about operational and structural changes required, such as providing more rehabilitation or more prisons, we should consider the basics of prison life: food, shelter, exercise, work.
READ MORE: One cell in Alcatraz prison could certainly be put to good use
There are no legislative minimum nutritional standards for food served in prison. If everyone else is encouraged to eat healthily and consume five portions of fruit and vegetables a day, the same should apply to prisoners. They are limited in what additional foods they can buy (assuming they have the money to do so) and so they are dependent on the prison providing them with enough food each day to meet their calorific and nutritional requirements.
There is no legislative basis for mattress quality. This may seem a trivial issue – to someone who is not a prisoner. Try sleeping on a 10cm-thick foam mattress for years on end and see how that affects your own sleep quality and so your physical and mental health.
READ MORE: John Swinney's Programme for Government – all you need to know
There is a requirement that prisoners get access to the outdoors for an hour a day, weather permitting. There is nothing about ensuring they have access to sunlight for Vitamin D intake, nor even to have access to nature, such as a patch of grass and a few trees, and so the usual routine is access to a concrete yard only, and only at the one set time each day fixed by prison staff.
Work should involve meaningful training for work outwith prison. That means training in skills required for today's job market and, crucially, that means access to computer skills. Very few prisoners gain full training for employment outwith prison and even fewer gain computer-based training.
By not ensuring prisoners get adequate and wholesome food each day, by not caring that their sleep is affected, by not allowing them full access to the outdoors, and by not providing full training for them for employment once released, we are already letting them know they are in prison to be punished. They are not like us.
If we are serious about rehabilitation then the only major loss a prisoner should experience should be their loss of liberty. That is the fundamental question we all need to ask ourselves. What is it we want of our prison system: rehabilitation or punishment? As Kaitlin Dryburgh states, we already know that the existing system does not work. The reconviction rates show this. So are we prepared to increase spending on rehabilitation services, knowing that by spending more now we will save by having fewer prisoners in the long term? The answer, at least for me, is yes!
David Logan
Milngavie
MARIE Curie Scotland strongly endorses the Scottish Parliament Health Committee's statement in their report on the Assisted Dying Bill (Assisted Dying Bill needs 'further consideration' before becoming law, Apr 30) that everyone who needs it should be able to access good quality palliative care at the end of their lives, and that there must be a concerted focus on achieving this regardless of whether the Assisted Dying Bill progresses or not.
This acknowledges that too many people are not getting the care and support they need at the end of life.
READ MORE: Palestinians in Gaza speak out as Israel starves them
Your readers may be surprised to know that they are spending – via public funding – more than six times the amount supporting people in the final year of life as hospital inpatients than supporting them with primary, community health and hospice care. People dying in hospitals is not what they – or their loved ones – want.
This why Marie Curie Scotland is campaigning for a Right to Palliative Care. We need the law to make sure that everyone has the right to get the care and support they need in their final months, weeks, days, and hours of life. There is only once chance to give someone a good end-of-life experience.
Marie Curie takes a neutral position on assisted dying, but we are far from neutral on the need for everyone to get the care and support they need when they are dying. 90% of us will need palliative care, far more than the number who might ever want an assisted death.
We urge MSPs to consider carefully the full implications of their decisions about the Assisted Dying Bill. But they should, too, take very seriously their responsibility to make sure that access to good quality palliative care is improved for all who need it in Scotland.
Amy Dalrymple
Associate Director of Policy and Public Affairs, Marie Curie Scotland
HOMES Under The Hammer is credited as a BBC Scotland production, yet each month only about one property in Scotland is featured. The presenters are all very interesting but only one is a Scot. There is concern over the cost of costume dramas. To my recollection there haven't been any Scottish ones for many years. River City, which gives pleasure to many people, must cost a fraction of what EastEnders does, and should be spared.
Margaret Pennycook
Glasgow