Dr Katrina Morrison

More people are serving life sentences in Scotland as a proportion of the national population than in any other country in Europe. In many respects, however, Scotland claims to adopt a welfarist rather than a penal approach to criminal justice.

The factors underpinning this paradox are the subject of a new paper – The Paradox of Scottish Life Imprisonment – by Dirk van Zyl Smit, professor of comparative and international penal law at the University of Nottingham and Katrina Morrison, lecturer in criminology at Edinburgh Napier University.

The paper uses a wide range of data to explain the factors underpinning this paradox and focuses on key aspects of the imposition and implementation of life sentences, providing, for the first time, an analysis that goes behind headline figures.

The paper concludes that, notwithstanding the commitment to welfare in penal policy, the high rate of life imprisonment is driven by both increased punitiveness and attempts to reduce the risk that serious crime poses to society.

Finally, the paper outlines strategies for reducing the use of life imprisonment, which may be more effective because they pay close attention to the Scottish penal context, but which have relevance for other jurisdictions seeking to reverse penal excess.

Download the paper here