News In Focus
26 September 2008
Sheriff spares fraudster jail for lack of places
A sheriff yesterday told a benefit cheat who appeared before him that the reason he was not being sent to jail was because there was no room.
Sheriff Lindsay Foulis at Perth Sheriff Court sentenced 46-year-old George Munce to 240 hours' community service for obtaining £9,500 in benefit between 2004 and 2006 by claiming he was single when he had had a domestic partner for nearly 10 years.
The sheriff stated it was being said that prison populations were at crisis point and as a result, although he thought the offence deserved a custodial sentence, he was going to deal with it by the direct alternative of community service.
The money will also have to be paid back at £10 a week, which will take about 19 years.
Earlier this week Mike Ewart, head of the Scottish Prison Service, called for prisoner numbers to be capped after they reached a record high of 8,137, exceeding the safe limit of 8,126 and well over the total design capacity in Scottish prisons of 6,625.
Opposition politicians said judges should never have to be put in the position of having to decide how to sentence on such a basis, and if they felt prison was the proper sentence, that was what they should impose.