The Scottish Government's plans to end automatic early release for prisoners serving more than four years are looking increasingly confused and problematic.

In many ways, the proposal is based on a sound principle, which is that rather than automatically releasing prisoners early, the release of every prisoner should be carefully considered case-by-case based on factors such as risk to the community and efforts at rehabilitation in prison. Such a change would also be a step closer to a system in which the sentences handed down by judges are the same as the sentences served by offenders. Understandably, that is what many victims of crime, and most members of the public, would like to see.

However, the concern over the government's plans expressed by criminologists and other experts has now reached a crescendo and the Scottish Government would be wise to listen. Under the current system, prisoners released after serving two-thirds of their sentence are subject to strict supervision and can be recalled to serve the rest of their sentence if they breach the conditions of the early release. It is not a perfect system and there are offenders who do breach the conditions and reoffend, but the system is based on the reasonable idea that a prisoner should be released back into the community in a staged, supervised way to reduce as much as possible their chances of reoffending.

The concern over the Scottish Government's proposals is that they would replace this system, imperfect as it is, with an even worse one in which prisoners serve all or most of their prison sentences but are then released unsupervised back into the community. The fear is that such prisoners released "cold" into the community would be more likely to reoffend. In other words, the Scottish Government's stated aim in changing the law - protecting the public - would be entirely subverted and the change could achieve exactly the opposite.

In a sign that the government does appear to be listening to such concerns, it has amended its proposals although, sadly, it has ended up in even more of a muddle. What the government now proposes is that long-term prisoners excluded from early release would be subject to a compulsory period of supervision after they are released, but this is a most unsatisfactory solution. Adding supervision to the end of a prison sentence might help the prisoner to fit back into community life, and reduce their chances of reoffending, but it clearly breaches the principles of open, understandable sentencing by unilaterally increasing the punishment handed out by the courts.

The government's proposals will also have another unfortunate effect which will be to increase the prison population. Not only is this the opposite of what a good, progressive criminal justice policy should be aiming to achieve, it also contradicts the direction of travel in other areas of justice, most notably the decision not to build a new gigantic women's prison in Inverclyde and build smaller, community-based facilities instead.

The increase in the prison population is also likely to ramp up the demand on prison programmes designed to aid rehabilitation, such as drugs education or anger management. These programmes are absolutely central to addressing the causes of crime, yet, as The Herald's freedom of information request shows, there are already long waiting lists for them and the lists are only likely to lengthen even further with the end of automatic early release. As experts such as Dr Cyrus Tata have made clear to the Scottish Government, how are prisoners supposed to put together a good case for early release if they have not had a proper opportunity to take part in good prison programmes?

The Scottish Government will have to look at the availability of prison programmes if it goes ahead and ends automatic release but instead it should look again at the plans in the face of almost unanimous opposition from experts in the area. The government has acknowledged that a supervised period in the community is a necessary element of good, progressive sentencing, but rather than tagging it on the end, it should be an inherent part of the sentence; sentencing should also be more transparent with judges explaining upfront what proportion of a sentence could be served in the community. For the sake of prisoners, victims and the wider public, our justice system should be as clear and transparent as possible; in their current state, the goverment's proposals to end automatic release will only add more confusion.