One of the great challenges facing the Scottish criminal justice system is how to prevent those who commit a crime for the first time becoming serial offenders.
Recorded crime in Scotland is at its lowest level in nearly four decades, but a substantial proportion of it is down to repeat offenders.
Too frequently, a life of crime begins in the teenage years or even earlier, but efforts to turn youngsters away from offending can be highly effective. Gaining employment, and through it a sense of pride, responsibility and the chance at a different life, is often the key factor in convincing an offender to change his or her ways. So forcing a young person to disclose even a minor conviction to would-be employers for years after the offence only makes it harder for them to go straight.
The current disclosure rules for offences relating to children are too tough. The convictions of under-18s are spent in half the time of adult offences, but a teenager guilty of an offence punishable with a community order still has to disclose it for two-and-a-half years afterwards. A rule that makes it hard for a young person to get work for 30 months during this short but highly formative period in their lives is likely, inadvertently, to hinder positive change. It would make eminent good sense for children and young people to have their records expunged sooner, as suggested by the think tank the Centre for Youth and Criminal Justice.
It goes without saying this should apply only to those offenders who have committed relatively minor crimes (the majority), not the so-called "critical few" who show seriously dangerous violent or sexually violent behaviour. For the sake of public safety, employers must always be able to rely upon full disclosure where they are concerned.
There is a similar effort underway to increase the number of adult prisoners who can eventually have their prison term expunged from their records, thereby making it easier to make a break with their criminal past.
Both moves represent a welcome recognition that the requirement to punish offenders should not be allowed to undermine efforts to turn them away from crime.
This should be relatively straightforward to sort out. One proposal is to take fewer children to prosecution in the first place, while ensuring that serious offences are not thereby "hidden". This reform has been delayed, but ought to be taken forward as a priority.
Common sense dictates that the current rules could be more of a barrier to reducing crime than an aid to it.
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