Commenting on homicide statistics released by the Scottish Government today, showing homicide using a sharp instrument is at its highest rates for five years, Liberal Democrat Justice spokesman Robert Brown said:
"The scourge of knife crime is all too evident to the families of those killed with a knife. People who use knives to injure others can rightly expect to go to jail.
"The priority must be to stop people carrying knives in the first place. All the evidence is that this is best done by rigorous enforcement of the law and by working to break down gang cultures, particularly in the West of Scotland.
"Everyone knows that simplistic efforts by populist Labour and Tory politicians to outbid each other in sending more and more people to prison for longer and longer just do not work.
"Offenders frequently come out worse and more hardened than they went in- and all at huge cost to the public purse."
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