The criminal justice system in Scotland has long been regarded as distinct from that of England (and Wales). Even following the Act of Union, Scotland retained her basic regalian state power to punish, supported by her own legal system, courts and culture. This suggests that the nation has never been entirely ‘stateless’, yet the Scottish State has often been regarded as essentially benign (Croall, Mooney & Munro, 2016, 9), as less likely to exercise its monopoly on violence (Weber, 1918) than the UK. It is widely asserted that the Scottish criminal justice system is ‘fairer’, capable of reflecting the ‘values of a modern and progressive nation’ by relying less on prison and focusing more on addressing the underlying social causes of crime (Matheson, 2015a). Its welfarist approach to youth justice, in particular, which aims to divert children under the age of 16 from the formal criminal justice system, ‘has been widely praised nationally and internationally’ for its focus on the needs of children rather than on their offending behaviour (Scottish Human Rights Commission, 2012, 26). Criminal justice in Scotland is thought to reflect distinctively Scottish values, notably its unique civic culture which purportedly favours more inclusive social and penal policies (McAra, 1999, 378). This chapter seeks to examine the validity of such claims by focusing on several main aspects of the Scottish criminal justice system: prison policy, alternatives to custody and youth justice, these being the principal areas where the differences between policies north and south of the border are often thought to be most striking. It then attempts to determine what these policies reveal about the nature of the Scottish State under the control of the SNP.