Letter from West Lothian

I’m just a plainspoken Colorado criminal defense lawyer, but the way I see it…

Society is incentivizing criminals to commit more crimes through implementing soft-on-crime policies.

That’s from an article in National Review that ran just three months ago. It suggests the way to crack down on crime is to send more criminals to prison for longer terms.

Iain Smith is a criminal defense lawyer who writes from Scotland to remind me that being hard or soft on crime is a distraction from a focus on the trauma that leads some people to commit crime. Adverse childhood experiences frequently set an intersecting path with the criminal justice system, as Smith described here last year with an empath’s touch. The year before, he had been named Scottish Lawyer of the Year.

Recently Scottish sentencing law has responded to some of those ideas, as reflected in new guidelines for the sentencing of persons younger than twenty-five years.