Ruth Davidson led on numeracy (or as Tories call it, “numberacy”) at FMQs today.
And we can see why she’s concerned.
Because the party’s big line of attack yesterday was this:
And, well, those numbers need some work.
Because there are only 6,788 convicted criminals in Scottish prisons AT ALL.
We know that around 1000 of those are on life sentences, leaving 5,532. We’re not told what the Tories are classing as “serious” criminals, but we know that around a third of criminal convictions in Scotland come from five categories of crimes that most people would class as “serious”, and it would seem reasonable to therefore assume that at least a third of the remaining prison population (roughly 1844) also did.
We know the average sentences for those types of crimes:
Non-sexual violence: 2 years, 7 months
Attempted murder and serious assault: 2 years, 8 months
Rape and attempted rape: 6 years 9 months
Sexual assault: 2 years 7 months
Drugs: 1 year 6 months
None of these “serious” criminals would be eligible to be released under a presumption (no ban has in fact been suggested) against custodial sentences shorter than 12 months. If we knock them off the figures, we’re down to something like 3,688 people in Scottish prisons convicted of lesser crimes.
Almost all of those are crimes of dishonesty: theft, shoplifting, fraud and so on, along with heinous stuff like petty vandalism, breach of the peace and “Other miscellaneous, including urinating”. All of them bad things to do, for sure, but not most people’s idea of “serious” or frightening criminality.
So when the Tories say the proposal would “let almost 10,000 serious criminals back out onto the streets”, the most accurate true figure we can find for that is zero.
(And it’s not one of those sneaky tricks where they’re adding up lots of years to make the number sound bigger by producing a figure for the entire Parliamentary term or whatever. Their webpage – which is actually just a cover for yet another fake petition – specifically says “last year”.)
Even on the most demented Tory hang-’em-and-flog-’em definition, where ALL crimes are considered serious and you should get 20 years without remission for dropping a crisp packet in a car park, the number would be barely a third of what they claim.
But in a sane world where words still mean what they mean, “serious” criminals don’t tend to get sentenced to less than a year, so none of them would be walking free. And there aren’t even close to 10,000 criminals – of ANY sort – in Scottish jails at all. So if the Tories want to see an improvement in numeracy, they might want to start off by looking inwards.
