AS we look on in abject horror at the brutal racism of the American criminal justice system, we would do well to direct some of our outrage at the treatment of people who fall on the wrong side of the law on our own soil.

This week, a report was published by Her Majesty’s Inspectorate of Prisons for Scotland (HMIPS) which condemned Glasgow’s Barlinnie prison as “not fit for purpose” and warned that the conditions in the Victorian-era building risked breaching international human rights obligations.

Based on an inspection in September last year, the report raised concerns around overcrowding, with the population sitting at 40% above its intended occupancy, and around the “severe state of disrepair” of medical rooms which posed a health risk to patients and staff – a particularly worrying finding considering the health crisis which is now upon us.

HMIPS also insisted on the urgent replacement of the prison’s “cramped and inhumane” reception holding cells – or “dog boxes” as they are known among prisoners – which were first condemned by inspectors 25 years ago and have since been highlighted as a breach of human rights by the European Committee for the Prevention of Torture on several occasions.

This news was met with little fanfare – after all, it’s not as though there’s nothing else going on right now. But, make no mistake, the condition of our prisons should be big news – it should illicit righteous anger, viral Tweets and, dare I say, protests of solidarity. The fact that it so rarely does says a lot about how the general population feels about people who are caught up in the criminal justice system in this country. These are issues which feel distantly removed from most people, at least from those who are typically well-equipped to advocate for themselves and others.

Is there any other group of people who could have been held in conditions deemed below the basic standards of human rights for a quarter of a century without any action being taken to address the problem? Without this being held up on a weekly basis by politicians and commentators as a damning indictment of our country’s commitment to treating people with dignity and compassion – values we are supposed to pride ourselves on?

The sad state of affairs is that very few are interested or willing to stick their neck out on behalf of a politically unsympathetic population. Instead, it is left to human rights bodies to repeat their concerns until they can be ignored no longer. Take, for example, the woefully timid decision by the Scottish Parliament this February to lift the ban on prisoner voting by the absolute bare minimum for people on sentences below one year, when they could have extended this to four years as proposed by the Scottish Greens and the Faculty of Advocates. This literal disenfranchisement of prisoners reflects and protects the ability of those with the most power in our society to disregard those with the least. No politician needs to worry about losing the support of prisoners based on how they are treated “inside”, because they can’t vote anyway, and as long as they are kept disengaged and disaffected with the system they are unlikely to start when they get out.

After its 25-year warning, the Scottish Prison Service, with investment from the Scottish Government, has confirmed that it plans to refurbish both the holding reception and the health centre at Barlinnie by 2022. Meanwhile, the prison as a whole is due to be replaced in 2025 by the new HMP Glasgow, which is expected to be twice the size in order to address the issue of overcrowding.

The Prison Service has noted in response to the Barlinnie report that the population has fallen by 29% as a result of Covid-19, through a combination of early releases and smaller numbers being processed by the courts which have scaled back business in lockdown. However, these are temporary, emergency measures, none of which get to the heart of the long-term issues (and there is already evidence from the Scottish Human Rights Commission to suggest that some prisoners’ conditions have worsened under the pandemic response).

A report last year identified that Scotland has the highest prison population rate in Western Europe. While it is acknowledged that Scotland’s largest prison is “not fit for purpose”, is it not time to ask deeper questions about why the population across the prison estate has risen so dramatically above its intended limit, over the same period that crime has fallen? Amid the refurbishments and new-builds and expansions, how many people do we actually want to see held in our prisons – and what does that say about the kind of country we are building outside the prison walls?

As the Scottish Prisoner Advocacy and Research Collective has written: “Prison is an inherently harmful institution: it damages imprisoned people; it disrupts and burdens their families; it disintegrates communities.” There is ample evidence of these counterproductive impacts, and yet there is a continued reliance on the use of custodial sentences by the courts and a “common sense” belief that prison is an effective way of addressing crime.

In reality, there is evidence that prison does not reduce re-offending, particularly among those on shorter sentences, and that young people caught up in the criminal justice system may be more likely to re-offend than young people who had engaged in the same behaviours without any intervention. And, of course, there are glaring inequalities when we look at which groups are most likely to experience such interventions – inequalities based in socio-economic background, in years of being institutionalised in the care system, in childhood experiences of abuse, trauma or neglect, and in complex mixes of mental health issues and alcohol and drug problems.

This is something that has increasingly been recognised at the political level with regards to women offenders, who make up 5% of the total prison population. There are plans to replace Scotland’s only women’s prison, Cornton Vale, with a much smaller prison for the most serious offenders and create new Community Custody Units which are to take a more “trauma-informed” approach. But while women’s patterns of offending differ greatly from men’s (reflected in the number of prisoners), many of the same complex needs exist among the male population.

Statistically, people living in more deprived areas are at greater risk of going to prison; 45% of adult prisoners surveyed say they were physically abused in their home as a child; 56% say they were sworn at, humiliated or put down by an adult in their home; 31% are care-experienced – a hugely disproportionate number given that only 0.5% of the total population has been in care; and Addiction Prevalence Testing in 2017 found that 76% of prisoners were positive for illegal drugs when they arrived, while the Scottish Prisoner Survey identified that 63% had an alcohol use disorder.

Figures like these demand difficult conversations about what more can be done to help people who have been consistently let down and mistreated by the people and institutions that should have been there to help them. Of course there will be cases where prison is unavoidable, but if what somebody requires is intensive support and treatment, and instead they are offered punishment in an inherently hostile environment with demonstrably poor conditions, can a positive outcome really be expected? Or is this simply a continuation of a cycle which writes off some people in our society from the get-go?

In the face of Covid-19, we have been told that we are “all in this together”. That’s a nice thought, but it will ring hollow in the worst possible way if it does not extend to those who were left at the margins before this crisis began and who are, in far too many instances, being pushed further to the brink even as we type out our cheery hashtags. There are so many causes for anger in the current political climate, at home and around the world – just try to save some of yours for the people locked up and so often locked out.