The naked rambler

The naked rambler, Stephen Gough, could spend the rest of his life in prison, in Scotland. Interesting that the English have decided that action should not be taken through the criminal justice system, but the Scots are pursuing him relentlessly. After spending a year in Perth prison, the police were waiting for him on his release and re-arrested him.

This is bizarre on many levels. The Scots have a worse problem with prison over-crowding than even the English. There are more than 8,000 people held in Scottish prisons, taking it to the top of the European imprisonment table. For every 100,000 of the population in Scotland, 157 are in prison at any one time. That is double the rate of our near neighbours France, Germany or Italy. And this is at a time of an all time low in crime rates in Scotland.

The Scottish government has given lead in a public discourse focusing on reducing the use of prison and has ambitious targets to reduce the unnecessary use of prison custody, so the imprisonment of a man for being naked flies in the face of common sense.

Is the Scottish criminal justice system riven with prudishness and sex-obsessed? I heard a crazy discussion on Radio 2 with a female journalist implying that the naked rambler was akin to a paedophile and rapist. But there is nothing remotely sexual about his nakedness; quite the contrary. He is just nude. Get over it. Who cares. He should not be in prison, in Scotland or in England.

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January 15, 2010 Posted in: Sentencing, Uncategorized