IT IS CRYSTAL CLEAR SCOTTISH PRISONS ARE A COUNTRY MILE BETTER THAN ENGLISH PRISONS. SO WHY ARE WE NOT SHOUTING THE NEWS FROM THE ROOFTOPS?

I make no claims to be any great expert on the prison system. That said, I reckon I know more than most. I have never been a prisoner myself. Thankfully. However, I have been a visitor to lots of Scottish jails over the years – Dumfries, Barlinnie, Addiewell, Polmont, Shotts. And yes, I never lose the very particular feeling which runs up and down my spine every time I make my way through the front door. And yes, I never lose the feeling of huge surging relief when I step back outside and light up to mix some craved nicotine in with a world's worth of free air. And every time I thank my lucky stars to be doing so.

Prisons aren't great places. Nor should they be. Yet I have never failed to be impressed by what I have found behind the razor wire. I firmly believe all institutions have their own particular feel. Their own mood. We do lots of work in schools and it is never hard to tell the badly run, failing school from the well managed, thriving school. Hospitals are the same. Offices are the same. You pretty well know it within five minutes of walking through the door.

You form an impression from body language. Expressions. A tone of voice. The way people interact with each other. The way they carry themselves. There is a very particular body language dance when it comes to oppressors and the oppressed. I saw it in on the streets of the old East Germany and the occupied territories of the West Bank. When one side holds all the weapons and all the power. When one side is willing and ready to impose its rules with a baton or a rifle butt. You can feel oppression in your bones. It seeps out of the bricks.

Never once have I had that feeling in a Scottish Prison. Not Polmont where the young dafties were once sent. Not in Shotts where the lifers count down the years.

A few years ago, I would often hear complaints from clients released from short term sentences for low level thieving. Three month sentences and six weeks served. Out before there had been any kind of rehabilitation programmes. And this always bugged me. The twenty year guys in Shotts were taking degrees and learning all manner of skills. The short term guys in Dumfries were barely processed before being sent back out onto the streets.

One client in particular would rant on about this. Andrew was a twenty first century version of the Artful Dodger. With a clear head, he was as good a thief as his Dickensian forerunner. With twenty or thirty blue valium hurtling round a deep-fried brain, he was the worst shoplifter in the world. He was always 100% convinced he was invisible. Oops. He wasn't. Three months. Four months. The cycle. The revolving door.

When they let him out, he would invest £10 of his liberation grant on a soothing tenner back of smack before heading our way to rage against the system. Every time they locked him up, he would put his name down for reading and writing classes. And every time he neared the top of the list, they would let him back out again. Andrew was one of the smartest lads I have ever met. In a parallel universe, he could have been a barrister, a City wide boy, more or less anything. He had been a bad boy from the age of eight and played far too much truant to ever stand a chance of learning to read and write properly. By the time he became a First Base regular, he regretted this and was determined to put it right. He saw jail time as his best chance of learning and he often wished he could be locked up for longer. 

Hell, I wished they could have locked him up for longer. A full year served would have been enough to clear his brain of valium and heroin. A full year served might have been enough for his huge IQ to be properly reflected by newly acquired reading and writing skills. A year served might have been enough to get him clear of his endlessly chaotic life.

Sadly he never served a full year and he died of an overdose before he made it to twenty five.

This doesn't happen any more. Thankfully the Edinburgh Government has chosen to completely ignore the 'lock em up and throw away the key brigade' of the Daily Mail. Now, nickel and dime offenses mean community service time which almost always leads to less re-offending. There is a new rule of thumb. If a sentence is going to mean less than a year served, Sheriffs are strongly urged to go down the community service route and avoid jail time.

This is good news on all kind of different levels. As a taxpayer, I am delighted my money is not being wasted. Every time we send the likes of Andrew off for a short sentence, it costs us £5000 a month. For what? It makes them much more likely to re-offend and ensures the jails are packed like sardine tins. Every bit of research tells us prison is the punishment most likely to breed serial offenders. Of course, the Mail and its grey-haired readers care nothing for research. Experts are so last year in Brexit Britain. They want people locked up regardless. The Westminster Government always doffs its cap to the Daily Mail. Thankfully, the Edinburgh Government tends to give them the finger. Three cheers to that.

Now jails are largely reserved for the more serious offenders. This means they are seldom overcrowded. This means there is less tension. The prison management gets the chance to undertake rehabilitation work rather than trying to keep a lid on the ever present likelihood of a riot.

This hasn't always been the case. Not remotely so. In pre-devolution times when Scottish jails were run from London, north of the border prisons were among the most notorious. The likes of Barlinnie and Peterhead outdid category 'A' Texan prisons when it came to wall to wall brutality. In 1935, twice as many inmates died in Peterhead than in Hitler's newly opened Dachau.

A few months ago, the Prison warders in England went out on strike. They reached an 'enough is enough' moment. Too much violence. Too many rats. Too little training. Too many drugs. Too much lockdown. Too little rehabilitation. Their workplace had become a living nightmare on the back of endless cuts.

They found themselves in the midst of a perfect storm. The Westminster Government slashed the prison budget by 40% whilst at the same time pandering to the demands of the tabloid press and locking up more and more convicts. As conditions descended into a pit of unmanageable violence, filth, and squalor, the warders could see the writing on the wall. They were working in places which were about to explode.

At that time I was in and out of the local jail seeing clients. I asked the warders if they were considering strike action themselves? No. Things are different up here. We don't have those problems up here.

And they were proved right. As the English prisons slid ever further into a fetid pit of violence, self-harm, and suicide our Scottish jails have retained a relative calm.

So are we spending a whole lot more money on our jails? No. So why is there such a chasm of difference? I guess the full answer to such a question is well above my pay grade. That said, a few things seem pretty bloody obvious.

We haven't traveled the dreaded privatisation road. We have only one privatised jail – Kilmarnock. And it is our worst nick by a mile. We have three clients who went into Kilmarnock having never touched a hard drug in their lives only to emerge a few months later as full blown heroin addicts.

Next up, our probation service is still a proper probation service, not a privatised mess. Our probation workers are experienced professionals who have the time and resources to do rehabilitation rather than box ticking.

Our system is based on a rather quaint idea. You find out what is working best and you do more of it. And you find out what isn't working well and you do less of it. One is tempted to say 'Duh!' It's obvious, right? Well, not to the London Government. Instead of deploying common sense, they choose instead to do what the screaming headlines of the Daily Mail demand of them.

And time and again they wheel out identikit ministers to extol the virtues of the private sector and they actually seem genuinely surprised when everything starts to go to hell in a handcart. It really is ridiculously simple when you give it a minute's thought. Any business looks to achieve maximum turnover and minimum costs. This means maximum profits, happy shareholders and eye-watering bonuses for the Board. When you transplant this mentality into the prison system, it soon becomes an accident waiting to happen. The business wants as many prisoners as possible to generate as much revenue as possible. They also want to spend as little as possible on keeping these prisoners. Worse food. More lockdown. Warders earning 60% of the salaries of their Public sector counterparts. 

In this world, prisoners soon become nothing more than units: units worth £60,000 a year. Nice money if you can get it, right? In America, they have a newly minted term for this. They call it the Prison Industrial Complex.

Is this why the tabloids are so keen to get four cons into every English cell? Where else can you make £240,000 a year's worth of gross profit out of a space of 10 foot by 6 foot? Not even Belgravia property gives that kind of return.

So here we are yet again. As the evening news is filled with horror stories about English jails, nobody is pointing out just how different things are north of the border. Just imagine if it was the other way round! Bloody hell. The BBC would be running ten-hour specials. Every night. Sophie Rowarth would be living out of tent pitched by the Barlinnie gates.

Why are we so bloody awful at shouting from the rooftops? At stating the obvious in such a way the obvious cannot be ignored? Why are our leaders so scared to point out just how much better our schools, hospitals, and prisons are when compared to those south of the border? When will we stop acting like a frightened colony and grow a pair?

So come on guys. It's time to grit your teeth and get out of the comfort zone. If we do things better than England, we need to say it: shout it. And stop the endless cap doffing and politeness.

Nobody ever got themselves free of London rule by making nice.