Scottish Government not meeting community justice target, says watchdog The proportion of community sentences used has stagnated in Scotland in recent years (Danny Lawson/PA) A Scottish Government pledge on community justice has not been achieved, Audit Scotland has said. Ministers have long sought to shift the balance of criminal justice away from incarceration and increase the use of community sentences such as community payback orders, drug programmes or electronic monitoring. Scotland has one of the highest incarceration rates of any country in Western Europe, despite a presumption against short sentences being put in place by the Scottish Government in an attempt to dissuade judges from handing out jail periods of less than 12 months.