Criminals will no longer be able to blame alcohol for their offending under new laws being planned by ministers determined to tackle drunkenness and violence.
Kenny MacAskill, the Justice Secretary, will introduce legislation to state that being intoxicated cannot be used in mitigating pleas for the defence.
Speaking at a World Health Organisation (WHO) violence prevention conference, Mr MacAskill will emphasise the need to radically change attitudes in Scotland, where 44% of prisoners admit they were drunk when they committed their crimes and most use their state of inebriation as an excuse.
Mr MacAskill is determined to ensure this is no longer possible and speaking in advance of today's conference at the Scottish Police College at Tulliallan, he said: "We are sick and tired of alcohol being used as an excuse. Frankly, it is not acceptable.
"It is you and not the drink, and whether you choose to get behind the wheel, behave in an ignorant manner or batter your wife, alcohol is not an excuse.
"We will be seeking to legislate to make it clear we are sick and tired of flimsy excuses for what is, quite frankly, bad behaviour. We are seeking to trigger a cultural change. We want to make clear the Jekyll-and-Hyde excuse is unacceptable. It is not the drink: it is the person drinking it."
England and Wales have already made offending under the influence of alcohol or drugs an aggravating factor which could increase the length of sentence. However, the executive believes that could prove counter-productive north of the border, partly as so much crime is committed under the influence.
Changing the law will form just one part of a wider Scottish Executive campaign across health and education to try to transform Scotland's so-called booze-and-blade culture.
Mr MacAskill said: "Scots' attitude to alcohol has to change. We have to end the drinking-to-get-drunk culture, and the anti-social behaviour and serious crime which springs from such abuse.
"We have made it clear we have to tackle the off-sale trade as well. That is something we will be starting to do in terms of tackling the promotion of excessive drinking and cheap drink. It is a matter of addressing the licensing laws and rolling out the act and seeing it can also apply to the off-sale trade as the on-sale trade.
"We believe the on-sale trade is really smartening up its act, but we have to address the off-sale trade where the growing consumption is. It could be argued that we took our eye off the ball in relation to off-sales."
The work of Scotland's Violence Reduction Unit (VRU) in tackling the underlying causes of crime forms a key part of that task. Chief Superintendent John Carnochan, head of the VRU, which is partly behind the conference, welcomed the move.
He suggested the minister should go even further by making alcohol an aggravating factor worthy of a longer sentence. "Alcohol should never be an excuse and it would be great to see the courts treat alcohol as an aggravating factor in relation to violent crimes," he said.
"If, for example, someone commits an assault when drunk, they should get four months rather than, for example, the three months they might have been sentenced to. We have already changed attitudes in relation to the passive victims of secondary smoking. The victims of alcohol feel the secondary consequences even more acutely.
"It is not about telling people what to do, but changing the culture which currently seems to celebrate excessive drinking."
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article