NO doubt many readers will be amused by your story today ("Fashion's day in court", The Herald, April 23) that a sheriff was so "out of touch" that he had to ask what jeggings were.
However the story behind the joke is of more concern.
It is not just the sheriff who is out of touch. It is the whole Dickensian farce of our criminal justice system.
Stealing a pair of jeggings - half leggings, half tights in case readers don't know - worth just £7, led to a fine of £545 on a 30-year-old woman. One can presume that the woman, Michelle Connan, is poor. Not certainly as poor as those who made the jeggings in some sweatshop in some faraway country, but poor in an increasingly unequal Scotland.
So the fine of £545 will only make her poorer. If she has children, they will be poorer too. She will be even less able to buy basic cheap clothing than she was before. She may not pay the fine, making the reasonable judgement for a poor person that to "do the time" in prison is better than not eating, not paying the rent, not heating the house. As she was also being punished for not appearing for her first court hearing, she may well have been arrested on a warrant early in the morning or held in the cells overnight.
But even if she is not poor, which is unlikely but not impossible, the costs of this one case of stolen jeggings are enormous. To the woman herself certainly, but also to the public purse. The cost of police, of prosecutors fiscal, defence lawyers, sheriffs, court staff and, quite likely, prison make a nonsense of taking someone to court for £7 jeggings. If there are children involved there will be wider harm - and of course wider costs. Foster parents, social workers, and lots of other costs of imprisonment will be factored in. And all this money does not address need, but is instead a job creation scheme for the better-off.
The number of women in prison has doubled in the last 20 years, and doubled from the 20 years before that. No more crime ,just more prison. Many are there on remand for crimes that do not warrant prison sentences. Many are seriously disturbed, and suicidal. Many have been the victims of more crimes and far more serious crimes than they have ever committed
The Scottish Government was recently persuaded at the last minute not to build the large new women's prison that was about to be put out to contract. Michael Matheson, the new Justice Secretary, is consulting right now on how to get the number of women in prison down. The short answer is stop sending them there. Let's tell police and prosecutors that the public interest does not demand thousands being spent to revenge a £7 theft.
Women for Independence kickstarted the campaign against the prison. We are still on the case. We would rather see some real justice for the poorest women and their families, with investment in respecting and restoring human dignity and not wasted on a broken criminal justice system.
Maggie Mellon,
Women for Independence,
3a Fettes Row, Edinburgh.
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