And so now they’re rioting in Germany, like they’re rioting in France, and we look across and wonder whether it could happen here and the answer is: yes, of course it could happen here because the idea that the British are less prone to violence is a myth, and we suffer many of the same problems as Germany and France, and because all it takes is the wrong TikTok video of flames and bricks and broken glass in the wrong hands and that’s it: us too.

But what’s really bothering me is that we’ve known for a long time that disorder was coming to Scotland and now it has and yet we’re still not taking the action we need to take to stop it happening again. The disorder may have been behind closed doors, locked doors in fact, and on a much smaller scale and it may not have made the headlines much, but it amounts to the same thing as the disorder in Germany and France: something deep-down is dysfunctional and wrong and eventually people snap. One campaigner described it to me as like a boiling kettle with the switch jammed in the on position: at some point it’ll blow.

What we know so far is that the riot in question happened at Polmont young offenders institution in Falkirk last month but it’s only now that we’re getting the details and seeing the pictures of the debris and smashed windows and ripped-up walls and furniture. We’re told that the incident involved around 30 inmates, some of them were armed with homemade weapons, and extra officers had to be brought in from other jails to restore order. A police investigation into what happened is ongoing.

But what's particularly important is the warnings we received. It was Natalie Logan McLean, who runs the prisoners' charity Sisco, who made the point to me about prisons being like a boiling kettle, and she’s not alone. The governor of Barlinnie, Michael Stoney, has said his jail is so overcrowded and outdated it could suffer a........

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