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From the Guardian today, the above and:
More sexual predators in England and Wales could be freed instead of jailed because of the pressure on courts and prisons, police sources have told the Guardian.
The warning comes after the Metropolitan police commissioner, Mark Rowley, on Thursday condemned the release on bail of a man after he admitted taking pictures of children and women, and then using AI to sexualise them.
Zafer Dogan was bailed to his flat overlooking a children’s playground, from which he committed some of the offences he admitted, despite prosecutors and police saying he should be remanded in custody.
One of his victims said they had to move after courts declined to send him to jail ahead of his sentencing on Thursday, where he was imprisoned for two years. https://www.theguardian.com/society/2026/sep/25/more-sex-offenders-in-england-and-wales-could-be-released-amid-court-system-crisis-police-sources-say
Is there any prospect of this happening in Scotland?
Not, according to BBC Scotland, in May 2026:
The latest releases, external saw 614 people freed early, all of whom had been sentenced to less than four years in prison and were not convicted of domestic abuse or sexual offences.
At the end of October the total prisoner population was 8,394, it then dropped slightly as the early releases got under way before steadily rising – including surpassing previous record population highs. The emergency release scheme has now ended but a new law passed by MSPs in March means short-term prisoners will now be automatically released after serving 30% of their sentence instead of 40%
This will come into force , externalfive days after the Holyrood election. Again, this law change does not apply to prisoners serving all or part of their sentence for domestic abuse or sexual offences. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/czd24z7563no
Governors also blocked a large share of other eligible inmates on risk grounds. That is a clearer statutory firewall than the situation described in England and Wales, where the immediate flashpoint is courts declining remand for people not yet sentenced.
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O/T apologies for this so soon!
BBC News reporting Scotland often triggers a reaction, commonly negative. However, today’s example has me caught between a strong urge to ridicule and genuine puzzlement over BBC editorial decision making for its news coverage in Scotland.
To explain, for more than three hours now (on Saturday 26 September) the lead article on the Scotland page of the BBC News website has this headline: ‘Murder or medical mix-up? New questions in the case of killer nurse Colin Norris’.
The report concerns an individual who was convicted in 2008 for killing an elderly patient in a Leeds hospital.
Below the article, the BBC site has two links under the heading ‘Related topics’ – namely ‘Scotland’ and ‘Leeds’. Clicking ‘Scotland’ takes you to a page on which the same article again leads.
On the BBC’s main UK page the Norris article today is listed way down in terms of prominence, arguably ranking c. 20th. On the main England page, I couldn’t find it referred to at all!
What about the BBC News website’s ‘local news’ for West Yorkshire, in which of course Leeds is located? Here the lead article, now for over five hours, has this headline: ‘The ladies who have lunched every month for 50 years’. This relegates the Norris report to second spot.
And by the way, no mention that I can find of the Norris news item on the BBC News website amongst its ‘local news’ for the adjacent areas of South Yorkshire and North Yorkshire.
Quite some differences in BBC editorial priorities in Yorkshire and Scotland it seems!
So why the editorial decision to give such prominence to this topic today on the Scotland page of the BBC News website? From careful reading of the article, what follows seems to be it: ‘The story begins in 2002 when Norris, a 26-year-old nurse, originally from Glasgow, found Ethel in an hypoglycemic coma as she recovered from a broken hip.’ (my emphasis)
If this is the extent of relevance to reporting Scotland, the Glasgow and Scottish diaspora must provide the richest of seams for BBC journalists to exploit in order to fill up on news for consumption in Scotland!
Puzzlement? Probably justifiably so! And tempted to ridicule …..?
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