Scotland’s prison numbers now higher than before early release scheme | UK News

The number of people in Scotland’s prisons has risen back above the level which sparked the early release of hundreds of inmates to free up space.

More than 300 inmates, half of whom were serving sentences for violent crimes, were freed in February and March after prison bosses warned they couldn’t take any more arrivals.

In the week before the process of releasing those inmates began, the total prison population stood at 8,326.

Seven months on, it has climbed to 8,359 – and a Scottish government forecast suggests it could reach 8,750 by the end of the year.

The Scottish Prison Service (SPS) said the population rise was having a destabilising effect on its jails and called for a reduction in numbers.

The Scottish government said it was working with the SPS on measures to manage the prison population in a sustainable way.

It also said that the findings of an independent review of sentencing were due by the end of the year.

The rise in the prison population rise has been caused by a number of factors, including high numbers of people who are awaiting trial and a surge in sexual crimes.

The prisoners released in February and March were serving sentences of less than four years and were freed after serving 40% of their term.

Those convicted of domestic abuse or sexual offences were excluded from the scheme.

A similar early release scheme in 2024 saw the release of 477 short-term inmates who had served at least 50% of their sentence.

The prison population had been 8,232 before this initiative started in June last year. The number dropped before rising again to reach 8,247 in September 2024.

Scotland prison population reached its highest ever level in 2012, when there were 8,420 people behind bars.

Scottish Prison Service chief executive Teresa Medhurst has previously said it is a “realistic expectation” that this record will be broken.

Scotland’s jails have a total designed capacity of 7,805 but have been operating above that level recently.

In July, officials in the justice department published projections of what the prison population could be by the end of the year.

This forecast that the average daily prison population in December could be as low as 7,950 or as high as 8,750, depending on how factors like court schedules play out in the coming months.

Where to put any further influx of prisoners is a huge challenge.

Ten of the 17 prisons in Scotland are currently at red risk status – up from eight in June. This means the SPS believes the jails are struggling to cope with the demands placed upon them.

The fallout of the Covid pandemic has been a big driver of the current prison population crisis.

Backlogs in court hearings mean 22% of the people in prison today are awaiting trial and have not been convicted.

Another factor is the uptick in serious crimes, with the number of high court trials scheduled more than doubling between 2018/19 and last year.

Many of those cases are for sexual crimes and record numbers of people with these types of convictions are now behind bars.

SPS data shows the number of prisoners with a history of sexual offending has jumped from just over 1,500 in 2022 to 2,300 in April this year.

The issue for SPS bosses is that both these groups need to be accommodated separately from the mainstream prison population, a big headache when space is at such a premium.

Prison bosses also have to play what has been described as a “daily game of chess” in trying keep violent rivals from Scotland’s organised crime groups apart.

About 660 prisoners are thought to have strong serious organised crime gang associations and many others are linked to lower-level, local gangs.

The last early release scheme was enacted using emergency legislation and the latest population data will raise questions about whether further releases will be needed.

Creating more capacity is the other option, but that is not going to happen overnight.

The planned replacement for Glasgow’s crumbling Barlinnie prison – Scotland’s biggest jail – will cost nearly £1bn, almost double the previous estimate. It is slated to open in 2028, three years behind schedule.

Campaigners have also called for a rethink on why so many criminals in Scotland receive jail sentences.

Scotland has historically had much higher rates of imprisonment than similar sized countries across Europe.

Research by Institute for Crime and Justice Policy Research, suggests Scotland sits around 19th out of 57 countries in Europe in terms of the highest number of prisoners per head of population.

Scotland’s rate (147 per 100,000 population) is the highest in the UK, and is also above Ireland (100), Denmark (69) and Iceland (35).

But it is well below countries like Turkey (484) and Russia (300).

A SPS spokesperson said: “We have been managing an extremely high and complex population for more than a year and the number of people in custody set to rise even further.

“This has an increasingly destabilising effect on our establishments, with staff unable to do the critical work of building relationships and supporting rehabilitation, and prisoners frustrated by the impact on their daily lives and the opportunities available to them.”

Speaking last month, Justice Secretary Angela Constance said Scotland was not alone in facing a rising prison population.

“There is no single reason for the increase and there is no single solution,” she said.

“We have taken a range of actions to address this, including changing the point of release for some short-term prisoners and bringing forward regulations to widen the use of home detention curfew, which enables selected individuals to be released to serve the last part of their sentence under curfew and clear licence conditions.”

She said the government would continue to work with the prison service and partners to manage the prison population in a sustainable way.