ABSTRACT
Imprisonment, for those over 21, and detention, for those under 21, is the ultimate sanction available to the Scottish criminal courts. Far from all persons in prison are serving sentences for crime however. Determining the rationale for the use of imprisonment in particular types of case is only to a very limited extent facilitated by reference to the legislation enabling imprisonment and to the case law developed by the courts. It should come as no surprise, therefore, that there is no single, agreed, coherent philosophy of imprisonment in Scotland today. Indeed, apart from the very early days when imprisonment was only used for holding debtors and persons awaiting trial or execution of sentence, there never has been. Meanwhile, in a world somewhat apart from Scottish prisons, the ‘treatment model’ of imprisonment was ousted from its dominant position in the league table of penal philosophies and replaced by the ‘justice model’.
