Forward-thinking sheriffs and procurators fiscal have visited the Red Hook Community Court in Brooklyn and seen how that uses a problem-solving approach.

This is the right way to go. We have been talking about this in Scotland for a long time.

No matter what the question is, the answer is relationships.

If someone has appeared in court several times, for crimes such as shop-lifting, vandalism or more minor drugs offences, it is right to ask: “What is going on here?”

Given the cost of the court process - the huge cost of lawyers, sheriffs, the prosecution team, can we not think about what it is achieving and what we are trying to achieve?

This type of approach is about saying: “we are going to do something about this right now, we are going to stand alongside you and fix it.”

The vast majority of women prisoners are no threat to anyone but themselves. Sheriffs use short sentences mainly because they have no other option. They may hope the prison service will do something, but a problem solving court puts that help in place where it can make a difference.

It can work, so long as the people and resources are there to provide what is needed to make the problem-solving approach a success. There need to be options to help people who have been homeless or had problems with alcohol and drug abuse, for example.

If it doesn’t work someone still needs to go to jail and we should accept that will happen in some cases.

And if there needs to be a punishment element that should be there. But a sheriff may think: I don’t want to send this guy to jail, and there is no point fining him £200. The more choices we can give sheriffs the better. But we need to stop locking up people who annoy us and only lock those up who really threaten us.

Some people have the idea that punishment works as a form of deterrent, but we need to get away from that. It really doesn’t. Punishment is an ideology.

John Carnochan is a retired policeman and was co-founder of the Scottish Violence Reduction Unit.