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Living conditions in our jails have been transformed over the last few years. Slopping out is no more, jails are kitted out with better facilities, and the imprisonment of children under 16 is coming to an end.

The says his seven years in the job have been a success, but Dr Andrew McLellan says that "the evil of overcrowding" is in danger of harming our prisoners.

So if prison isn't working at the moment, what do we do about it? We could, of course, build more jails, but Dr McLellan doesn't think that's the right approach. Instead, we should be putting fewer offenders behind bars and give them community sentences instead.

Those views are in line with what the Scottish Prisons Commission and many of those proposals have since been taken on by the Scottish Government. But are they right? Does prison work? And would community sentences be more effective, less costly and a more re-assuring signal to victims of crime that offenders are repaying their debt back to society?

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(21 Apr 2009)
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