Natalie McGarry

This is Natalie McGarry, former MP, who has just been sentenced to 18 months in jail for embezzlement. 

I'm not a supporter of the SNP and I don't know Natalie McGarry. 

McGarry is a fool. She's ruined her life for £25,000 quid. She's lost her job and is probably unemployable from now on. Her family life is in tatters. I don't know why she committed this crime or how she imagined she wouldn't get caught. 

The sheriff who sentenced her said: “Your fraud and deceit was (sic) of the most serious kind.” He said the charges were especially serious “because of the nature of the organisations and position of trust you held”. 

I'd love to know how the sheriff came to the conclusion that her crime was of the most serious kind. No one was injured, physically or otherwise. Her crime involved money. What would a less serious crime of this kind look like? 

But there will be people injured by her sentence. For one thing, McGarry has already had a miscarriage while on trial. For another, she has a small child who can't be with her in jail. Her husband works two jobs and it's not clear how he will look after their child. Let's hope they have an extended family who can rally round. 

So I have to ask: what purpose is served by putting McGarry in jail?

We keep seeing reports about the problems associated with jailing women. Women are the care-givers in most families. When a mother goes to jail, there's always a chance her children will go into care. The separation of a family is always bad. If the mother works, she'll lose her job. There's every chance she'll lose the family home too. 

The pressures on women in this situation are very serious: the level of self-harm rises alarmingly. Suicide threats and actions are more likely. And if you didn't already know: the risks associated with self-harming and suicide are passed on to children, so we have not one but two generations damaged. 

Six years ago, Elish Angiolini produced yet another report proposing that the number of women in jail should be reduced. Community sentences and supervision orders should be used to keep women at home. Six years on, the number of women in Scottish prisons has not been reduced. The risks of self-harm remain the same. Suicide remains a constant threat for women in custody. 

In McGarry's case, I ask myself if the sheriff was doing a 'Mick Jagger'. There was a time when famous people caught holding drugs, or getting into fights were punished quite unreasonably - just to make an example of them. Is that what's happening here? 

Her sentence won't deter anyone else from committing a similar crime. The Scottish legal system looks like an ass in this case - and not for the first time. Maybe one day a sheriff will use his discretion and decide to deal with a crime like McGarry's in a different way. But I'm not holding my breath.