By Professor John Robertson OBA
The Scottish Cons have been drooling at the above but it’s, no surprise, based on the inability to understand, or a nasty tendency to lie about, statistics.
From official data reported today:
and, crucially:
Comparing recent public service data – crime, health, whatever – with those in the pandemic period 2020/2021, is frankly stupid, maybe dishonest, but many of our ratty media folk love to do it.
We can, meaningfully, compare 2018/2019 data with recent data and what we get on this matter is, absolute discharges have fallen from 430 to 383, a 10.9% fall – significant!
Source:
Talking-up Scotland 'Albatraz' 
The UK has the highest prison population in the EU. Crime is drug and alcohol related. Too many neurodiverse people in prison without proper support. Often non diagnosed. There are more, total abstinence, proper rehab facilities opening. The Scottish Gov funding support £250million over 5 years.
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I know that you are continuing your unrelenting campaign to debunk and contextualise the lies spewed out by unionist politicians and their nasty media thugs and I commend you for ca’in the feet frae the lor’n’order Tory line.
I can think of two possible explanations for the reduction in the number of ‘absolute discharges’.
One is Sheriff’s and judges fearing accusations of being soft on crime trying to show, like The Knight of Many Bungs that they can be ‘tough and ruthless’.
The other could be that Procurators Fiscal decide that the circumstances of some cases, even though someone has broken the law, are such that there are extenuating circumstances and decide that a trial is not the appropriate way of dealing with it.
A third possibility is that, as your data have demonstrated, crime is falling in Scotland.
Alasdair Macdonald.
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