Imagine a senior policeman standing up in 1996 and telling a conference hall of fellow officers that jail is the place for serious offenders.

Picture the reaction if the chief superintendent behind the lectern had advanced the thesis that the human rights of the victims of crime should be prioritised over those of the criminals who do them harm.

What if, warming to his theme, he went on to argue that thugs aged 18-25 are old enough to know breaking the law is wrong and carries consequences?

Just think what his audience of boys and girls in blue would have made of that little lot in 1996.

They would have wondered if the speaker was quite well. A keynote address at the annual conference of Scottish police superintendents and this guy – their president – wastes everybody’s time with statements of the bleeding obvious.

One imagines newspaper reporters in the room closing their notebooks with a yawn. They had been hoping for controversy. All they got was platitudes.

But it was in the year 2026 that chief superintendent Rob Hay stood up and delivered his views on policing and justice in Scotland. And the scenery is so radically altered today that the reaction was not one of boredom but rather surprise he was willing to go as far as he did.

Really? You’re sure you want to say jail is the place for people who pose a risk to the public? Alrighty – on your head be it.

This part about young adults knowing the difference between right and wrong: you do realise, don’t you, their brains are still developing? You definitely want to put it out there that they’re responsible for their own actions?

And come now, superintendent, you’re going to irritate an awful lot of criminals and their apologists if you go around advocating the primacy of their victims’ rights. What year are we in here? 1996? It would have been disputatious enough if Mr Hay had merely shared his opinions with fellow officers.

Who knows, maybe some of the veterans secretly hanker for the old days when catching criminals and seeing them put away was an uncomplicated imperative in policing.

But Mr Hay had the temerity to say what he did in the presence of Justice Secretary Neil Gray. The politician was left shifting uncomfortably in his seat as this non-compliant maverick dared to instil the thought that, under the SNP, justice had lost its way.

‘Our members are concerned messages about prison numbers will influence policing decisions on our streets,’ he said.

‘Our job is to keep people safe, but we can only do that if the whole system is orientated the same way.’

Could it be that the superintendent has some issue with the current presumption that prisoners serving less than four years should be released after serving just 30 per cent of their sentences?

Perhaps he is conscious that, last year, the SNP thought 40 per cent was the right portion of sentences to serve. The year before that, it was 50 per cent.

When Mr Hay talks of the ‘respite’ prisons afford victims from their tormentors, it is almost as if he is challenging the received wisdom that actual prison time served by criminals must be reduced by 10 per cent every year to allow for the fact the prison estate is a shambles.

We mustn’t put words into his mouth, but he may even be guilty of supposing that the catastrophic delays and extreme budget overruns for two new prisons commissioned by the Scottish government are fuelling its spirit of absolution towards the criminal fraternity, and that that is no way to run a justice system. The new HMP Glasgow is now expected to cost £1billion – 10 times its original budget – and is scheduled for completion three years late in 2028. HMP Highland, meanwhile, is four times over budget and six years behind schedule.

I wouldn’t dream of accusing Mr Hay of taking this dark conjecture one step further and concluding that all this modern talk of ‘developing young brains’ and ‘rehabilitation over incarceration’ is merely a rhetorical shield to mask the SNP’s inability to build prison cells.

I am not even sure I believe that myself – and, be in no doubt, Mr Hay’s conventional views on the harms to society of soft-touch justice are exactly mine.

No, I suspect the average minister really does look at the lawlessness on our streets, the erosion of respect for the police, the impunity of the young untouchables who no longer associate crime with punishment and sees only progress.

I believe they really do think prisons are the last place to put thugs in the making because they suppose the prisons will complete the process.

To my mind, they really are more comfortable with saddling you and me with these hoodlums because, you know, hoodlums have human rights too and, on the issue of where to put them – in the community or in jail – theirs trump ours.

I think this because nowadays the notion of justice is deliberately obscured from Scotland’s young people rather than assiduously embedded.

Our schools are turning into war zones; teachers under attack almost daily in some of them.

They are sworn at, spat on, physically assaulted – and then asked by their superiors to wonder how they could have handled the situation differently.

Their tormentors? They are indulged in restorative conversations, encouraged to explore the feelings that contributed to the outburst that left their teacher with a black eye.

They are bribed with a plea bargain which insults us all: say sorry to Miss and we’ll forget all about it.

If that is how schools handle offending, is it any wonder these teen yobs leave with no fear of consequences? Rather than cementing the relationship between crime and punishment, our state education system actively fragments it.

Out into the big wide world these walking timebombs are sent and, naturally enough, they test its limits.

They find the government which has been in power since before they were born has endless patience with them.

Jail time? Not a bit of it. You’re far too young for that. Did you know your brain isn’t ready to make sensible decisions until you’re at least 25? Remember to vote for us. You can do that from age 16.

If that is the default position for young offenders, how abominable must their behaviour be for a sheriff or judge to override it and lock them up?

Not to worry, though, because even if they do get what they deserve in the court dock their guardian angels the Scottish government have a special offer of 70 per cent off prison sentences.

The language Mr Hay used to describe his position on justice was not platitudinous in the least in the year 2026.

It was almost nostalgic – like hearing a golden oldie and wondering where popular music went wrong.

His words made front page news yesterday, and rightly so. His was a timely intervention in a steady descent into lunacy.

The tragedy is the chief superintendent’s speech shouldn’t even have been news at all. That it was big news is a marker on a disastrous drift.

j.brocklebank@dailymail.co.uk