SCOTLAND'S top police officer has dismissed calls for mandatory prison sentences for carrying knives as a "headline-grabbing" move that would not tackle the country's lethal blades culture.
Stephen House, chief constable of Strathclyde Police, warned that locking up everyone carrying a bladed weapon would only create a "law of exception" and said the problem of knife crime needed to be dealt with in an "intelligent way".
His comment
s put him firmly at odds with the Conservatives and Labour, who are both calling for mandatory jail sentences for anyone who illegally carries or uses a knife.
The scale of knife crime in Scotland was yesterday highlighted once again by new figures which show stab victims are being admitted to hospital at the rate of more than three a day.
But Mr House, whose force has to deal with the vast majority of Scotland's knife attacks, this week cast doubt on the wisdom of a blanket policy of jailing knife-carriers.
"This weekend we've had three homicides and 40-odd serious assaults. Knives will figure heavily in all of those," he told the Scottish Parliament's justice committee, which is examining the Criminal Justice and Licensing Bill, which has provisions to lock up fewer offenders.
He said: "Possession of knives and use of knives is an issue – we need to deal with it sensitively and intelligently and not in a dramatic headline-grabbing way that sounds like the obvious answer to it.
"To put down in law that everybody should in the first instance is simply opening ourselves up to the law of exception. There will be exception after exception coming forward."
He later told The Scotsman a young boy who carries a knife "because of peer pressure or fear" needs to be educated about the consequences of knife crime, not locked up. "However, a second offence should probably be met with a jail term," he said.
Bill Aitken, the committee's convener and Tory justice spokesman, said the new figures on knife-related hospital admissions represented a "shocking tip of the iceberg". He added: "We need to send a message loud and clear – go out with a knife and you'll be going inside."
However, the SNP last night claimed the Tories' stance was "all over the place", after leading QC Paul McBride, who recently defected from Labour to the Tories, said there should only be a "presumption" in favour of jail sentences for knife-carriers.
Stewart Maxwell, a Nationalist justice committee member, said: "The Scottish Government is already taking the tough action needed on those who carry and use knives by doing more than ever before. Jail terms for knife carrying have already increased by a third and courts have been given powers recently to impose four-year sentences just for carrying a knife."
