Prisons
I reconvene the meeting and thank members: we have stolen only an extra five minutes for our five-minute break, which is our usual.
I welcome Clive Fairweather, Her Majesty's chief inspector of prisons for Scotland. It is his last appearance before the committee today—more about that later. I also welcome David McAllister, assistant chief inspector of prisons, and Malcolm McLennan and Michael Crossan, who are inspectors.
We will be referring to your reports, Mr Fairweather. You might have heard the minister's evidence on Craiginches. Do you have anything to add to your reports before we launch into questions?
Clive Fairweather (Her Majesty’s Chief Inspector of Prisons for Scotland):
The period covered by the annual report ended on 31 March. However, we have been to Aberdeen since then and we made a further visit to Aberdeen last week, just before the press conference, to find out whether there had been improvements. In addition, we have carried out intermediate inspections of Inverness prison, which I will be happy to discuss, as they are not included in the annual report and the reports will not have been before the Parliament. Last week, we carried out an intermediate inspection of Cornton Vale prison, in the course of which we also went to HMP Greenock to look at the medical facilities. I am happy to answer questions about any of those inspections.
I refer members to Clive Fairweather's annual report and to his address to the media, which are covered by papers J1/02/30/4 and J2/02/29/4. As I am mindful of the fact that time is pressing on, I ask members to put their questions.
Mr Fairweather, you have been concerned about staff morale for the past three years or so during which we have been involved in discussions with you about the prisons. You say:
"Staff have gone through 3 years of enormous uncertainty, and we can't simply ignore the disquiet which has been engendered."
You warn that that disquiet could
"persist for some considerable time".
Will the recent announcement on the prison estates review go some way to alleviating that disquiet? Should the Scottish Prison Service implement specific measures to address low staff morale?
I am sure that the announcements will go some way to putting right that uncertainty. Morale is a difficult thing to judge. I said in one of my papers that more leadership and less management will be required. During the past few years, there has been a certain amount of confrontation in relation to private versus public prisons. It is obvious that there must be competition, but I hope that some of those confrontational elements will fade.
Although we are only six months into the new reporting year, I am particularly concerned about the high levels of staff sickness that we are picking up. That trend has been detected in spite of the changes that have been made, for example, to the shift pattern. In Aberdeen, staff sickness is running at three times the 1997 level. Similarly, there were high staff sickness levels in Inverness and, more recently, at Cornton Vale, where the levels were extremely worrying—they were double the target. It is no secret to say that Cornton Vale will probably have the highest sickness levels in the SPS.
Although I am here to talk about the past year, I am receiving indications that staff sickness levels in the SPS will be particularly high this year. That is a concern because, when staff are absent, the remaining staff are put under pressure and there is less staff-prisoner engagement. Sickness levels will have to be watched carefully and managed up ahead. I have concerns about morale in general. However, when I stand talking to prison officers on the galleries, I am as impressed as ever by the daily cheerfulness of most of the staff whom I meet.
That has been our impression, too, except when some of us were confronted by a roomful of staff when we came to talk to them about the prison estates review. They thought that we were members of the Executive. Once we had explained who we were, the atmosphere thawed considerably.
You were safe after that.
I hear what you say about sickness levels, which is very worrying. High sickness levels are a feature of occupations in which people feel under stress or have felt under stress for a while.
You mentioned leadership. Can you expand on your statement that
"there needs to be far less emphasis on ‘management' and a bit more actual leadership"?
I can give the member a good example of what I mean. [Interruption.]
Will members and people in the public gallery ensure that mobile phones, pagers and other electronic devices are switched off?
The governor of Aberdeen prison, who had been in post for seven months, was the recipient of the worst report that we have ever written. Her response was that the prison had to take the report on the chin and to get on with moving forward. When I saw her on television and read what she had to say, I was hugely impressed. Previously, there may have been too much management of issues at Aberdeen, but the governor has now provided a potent example of leadership.
So people must roll up their sleeves.
Yes.
Does the need for leadership extend to the leadership of the SPS?
It extends across the board. There are always tensions between individual establishments and headquarters. In the army, units have views on headquarters and headquarters has views on particular units. I do not want to go into the matter in detail, but prison headquarters needs to examine its relationships with the field, and vice versa, in the hope that the confrontation that we saw last year will be reduced.
Is that possible with the current personnel?
It is. All that is needed is a slightly different mindset.
In the face of arguments, the Minister for Justice has granted Peterhead prison a reprieve. He has indicated that power will be provided to cells and that the prison officers' offer to re-roster and to provide prisoners with night sanitation, on request, will be investigated. Do those commitments offer Peterhead a long-term future?
We last inspected Peterhead prison in March. Many of the proposals to which you refer were included in that inspection, which took place four days after the announcement of the results of the estates review. In an ideal world, we would like more to be done in the prison. However, everything depends on whether the necessary money is available. The measures that have been announced are sufficient to enable Peterhead to continue to deliver the excellent regime that exists.
One issue will need to be monitored. Peterhead prison is extremely short staffed, as it is difficult to persuade officers to move there. Will the staff complement continue to dwindle without the comfort value of long-term build? Will the prison be able to recruit more prison officers? I do not know the answers to those questions.
In 1999, the SPS board indicated that another block could be built at Peterhead. There is certainly enough space to do that. I have made the same suggestion to the minister privately—I am sure that he will not mind my making that public. Power would have to be provided to cells in the present block and the whole electricity support system would have to be improved. We are not experts, but we think that for about £25 million it would be possible to have a 550-place prison at Peterhead. That would include a new visits facility, a new ops room, various other facilities that have been suggested and a new block, costing about £17 million. I am not a buildings expert, so I do not know whether the provision of a new block would assist with the decanting of prisoners while electric power in cell was installed.
One other point that I would like to make, which we made in our projections for the future, is that Peterhead holds many more older, frailer prisoners than do other prisons. Peterhead is beginning to have difficulty meeting the needs of those prisoners in its present buildings. I am thinking of the many buildings regulations, which were mentioned earlier. The building of a new prison block could meet those regulations by including facilities for the disabled. The new block—indeed, there is room for other new blocks—would give Peterhead a lot of flexibility for the future. The building of the new block would give Peterhead a complement of 550 places, if places in the existing blocks were taken into account. However, the problem, quite simply, is lack of funds—our estimate was that about £25 million was needed.
It may be worth saying that, subsequent to the recent announcement, ministers have indicated to me that their plans include replacement of the power supplies to the whole prison.
In measuring the effectiveness of prisons such as Peterhead in the public sector and, if appropriate, of those in the private sector, should we look at a reduction in reoffending as an indicator of the delivery of a real financial benefit to the prison service and the criminal justice system and a real benefit to public safety? When we compare different ways of providing new prisons, should effectiveness be taken into account as a factor?
We are very much about measuring outcomes and what we see in regimes. The bit that always seems to be missing, however, is the outcome for the public outside the prison. We can only guess at that and I suspect that it would be difficult to come up with a formula to measure it. Nevertheless, I imagine that another committee could be given the job of examining how to measure success in rehabilitation and the like. It may be high time that that was examined.
I remember talking to Michael Forsyth when he first came into office as Secretary of State for Scotland. He told me that one of the most frustrating elements of his job was never being able to measure outcomes. He was not able to complete that work, but it could be examined.
I want to follow up on the wider issues of performance management. You have said that the private prison contract management process allows for greater clarity and that that has led to a desire to see similar measures put in place in the public sector. The minister has now indicated that he wants to move down that route. Will you offer us more detail on how to manage performance in publicly run prisons?
For the first time, at the back of our annual report, we have tried to set out comparisons across the board. I am not sure of the annexe number, but it represents our first attempt to set out a like-for-like comparison of the performance measures that need to be considered. I would like to see that work extended—we have only made a start.
We are waiting for the Prison Service to take up some of the good ideas at Kilmarnock, of which a number could be used. A great deal more can be done in measuring outcomes. As we said in our first report, Kilmarnock is good at measuring outcomes. However, we also said that the contract that was drawn up for Kilmarnock needs to be more flexible. I hope that greater flexibility will apply to Kilmarnock in the future and to other new private prisons, including the remand prison.
I advise members that they should be looking at annexe 6 to Mr Fairweather's report, in which they will see comparators across all prisons.
I will continue in a similar vein on new prisons. As you know, the minister has challenged the public sector to match the competitiveness of the private sector. If it can do so, one of the prisons that was expected to be private might be a public build, public operate or private build, public operate prison. What steps will the public sector have to take to meet that competitiveness challenge?
One of the first matters that management, the unions and staff will have to consider is the evidence that Kilmarnock produced about how it operates and about its costs. They will have to consider how to equal that—I expect that that will be done through examining the work force and various practices.
There will be a level playing field in buildings this time. Previously, comparing somewhere such as Barlinnie with Kilmarnock has always been a problem. The challenge is not huge. It is a two-way challenge. Provided that people get down to it—I get the impression that they will—I see no reason why the challenge cannot be met. If the private sector can achieve certain standards, I do not see why the public sector cannot, but the public sector will have to re-examine and update some practices.
I will ask about one other issue that arises from the minister's response to the prison estates review. As you know, the decision has been made to go ahead with one private prison immediately, in response to the rapid rise in the number of remand prisoners. I invite you to say whether you welcome that proposal and ask whether you have anything to say about the remand-specific aspect of the planned private prison.
From the start, I have said that privately run companies were probably as good at running remand prisons, because those prisons do not involve rehabilitation and the like. I have never been entirely certain of the evidence from Kilmarnock, but a private company can provide a safe and decent environment quite quickly and can build quite quickly. It is sensible that the remand prison should go to a privately operated company, because of the speed, the pressures and the fact that what is involved is private citizens looking after people who have not yet been found guilty. A balance must be struck and I am encouraged by the situation.
However, we are still talking about a time that is three years away. I have not seen the detail, but the bigger problem for the prison service is not three years away. The bigger problem is next week, next month and next year. I do not know whether further building can be undertaken in places such as HMP Shotts, where we heard today that there is space. I hope that that is being considered instead of just the situation three years down the line. The figures have shot up because of the extraordinary number of remands this year, particularly in Barlinnie and Edinburgh. I hope that the number starts to drop away in the next month or so. If not, severe difficulties will be created.
I am sorry if I missed this, but did you say how long it would take to build a remand hall that would be suitable for the immediate problems? We understand that it takes three years or thereabouts to build a remand prison, so how long would a remand hall take?
I am not talking about building a remand hall; I am just talking about building a hall, as that would allow people to be moved around. The big difficulty is that the prison service is silting up with longer sentences. Longer-term prisoners need more space and juggling about. In addition, remand numbers are increasing. Those two elements are colliding. I have consistently said in every annual report that we need to deal with the situation now. I have not heard all the details of the house blocks that are being built up in the next year, but I think that now is the time to deal with the situation and that we should not say that we will solve the issue in three years' time.
Scott Barrie was going to ask a question about new prisons, but I suspect that it has already been dealt with, so I invite a question from Pauline McNeill.
Let me begin, chief inspector, by putting on record my personal appreciation of the way in which you have approached the inspection of prisons and have allowed members of the justice committees to accompany you and your team. That has been an excellent way of allowing us to see what goes on in prisons. I hope that that practice will continue.
Overcrowding, next to drugs, has probably become the most serious issue for the SPS. We know that five prisons are seriously overcrowded. My colleague, Paul Martin, in whose constituency Barlinnie lies, wanted to ask about this, but he has had to leave the meeting. Do you have a view on how quickly new house blocks can be built in order to alleviate overcrowding?
On your first point, thank you very much. On the subject of MSPs accompanying the inspectorate in the future, I notice that my successor is sitting in the public gallery, so the point is well made.
On overcrowding, the issue is not simply about buildings; it is also about staffing. The building of a number of new blocks lies ahead, although I have not seen all the details. To give an example, a new block eventually went up at Edinburgh prison after some initial wrangles over staffing. The space was available and the block went up within about 18 months of the decision being made to bring it on stream. I hope that we can continue to consider such projects in the near future.
If the number of prisoners continues to rise, fewer staff will be dealing with more prisoners. There has been an increase in concerted indiscipline and the like over the past year. I hope that that was temporary—perhaps it was due to all sorts of other factors. We are going to run into severe difficulties unless the number is contained and we consider new house blocks—they are expensive, mind you.
I turn to a different subject, which I have already raised with the Minister for Justice: Cornton Vale prison and women offenders. I am concerned to get some detail about the condition of women who have been transferred from Cornton Vale. Do you have concerns about their access to medical services, or has that matter been properly addressed?
When we inspected Cornton Vale last week, we were conscious of the proposals to transfer up to 50 of the stronger women to Greenock—although I have to wonder how 50 women who are not vulnerable will be found; that is another matter, however—but we concentrated on what the health centre was doing for the present Cornton Vale prisoners and on what measures had been sold, as it were, to Greenock. We were certainly reassured that all the lessons had been picked up.
I sent my medical and nursing consultants to Greenock last Thursday to find out whether the prison would be able to take on board 50 extra women, who will have a lot of demands, and to ascertain how the prison will manage with those female prisoners as well as with the whole gamut of difficult male prisoners who are looked after there. Greenock prison accommodates some people from areas of high deprivation, where there is drug taking and so on. I have not yet written the report on that visit, but it is worth saying that my medical consultants felt that Greenock prison had taken on board the various suggestions from Cornton Vale. To that extent, we should be reassured.
Having said that, I think that difficulties lie ahead. To expect to recruit the required number of nurses and to fill the suggested post of female medical officer in the time scale proposed may be a little optimistic. We have discovered difficulties with recruitment at Greenock prison in the past, related to its location. In particular, a large number of staff travel out from Glasgow.
I hope that, whatever happens, there is no transfer until the health facilities in Greenock prison are brought fully up to speed. Both health centres understand the issues and Stephen Swan, who is the new governor at Greenock prison, was formerly the governor at Cornton Vale, so there is understanding on both sides.
We have to support your view on that. The overwhelming issue on our visit to Cornton Vale was that a satisfactory position had been arrived at in the recognition that medical services had to be tailored to the type of offender who was detained at Cornton Vale. Part of that recognition was an increase in the number of registered mental nurses, as opposed to registered general nurses. All committee members will want to ensure that there are no transfers to HMP Greenock until we are satisfied that the provision of medical services there has reached the same level as that at Cornton Vale.
At the moment, I am relatively reassured. I just hope that the staff who are required at Greenock can be recruited in time. The women should not be transferred until those resources are in place.
So the women have not yet been transferred to Greenock.
No. It is not proposed to move any woman there before the end of October. I think that it might even take a little longer.
That was not what we understood.
No. We were under the misapprehension that the women had already been transferred.
No. Absolutely not.
Do you have a time scale for the transfers?
By the look of it, the transfers should take place by the end of October at the earliest. That is an operational matter for the Prison Service. The recruitment advertisements for nurses and the like were in the newspapers only last week or the week before.
I have a quick supplementary question on Cornton Vale. I received a letter recently from Tony Cameron, the chief executive of the Scottish Prison Service, telling me that there is no difficulty in allowing women in Cornton Vale access to night sanitation. That conflicts directly with the report from the prison visiting committee. What is your view of that?
We have mentioned that difficulty at Cornton Vale before. It was a big problem but not such an issue a year ago. I have done a great deal to bring to the fore the many positive changes that have taken place at Cornton Vale.
Following our inspection a year ago, I began to receive a lot of letters from ex-prisoners, telling me that access to sanitation had become an issue again. When we arrived at Cornton Vale this year, I was appalled to find that it was again an issue in the Younger block. I shall ask one of my staff to update us on that. This year, access to lavatories both during the day and at night had become an issue, largely because of overcrowding. The number of prisoners had risen to 290, whereas five years ago, the number was 170. The high level of staff sickness at Cornton Vale—which was double the target level—also meant that there were not enough staff on duty during the day to deal with the issue properly. There has been an increase in the number of patrolmen who are available at night, but access to sanitation at night was an issue when I visited the prison and I was assailed by many women—enough to convince me that they were not at it—who told me that there was a problem.
I am assured that the management is considering how it can address the problem, and I have raised the issue with the chief executive of the Prison Service, because I am concerned. We are still producing our report on the prison and I have asked Mike Crossan to look into the issue in more detail.
Michael Crossan (HM Inspectorate of Prisons for Scotland):
The problem was restricted mainly to the Younger block. We were told by a senior member of the establishment that, on occasions, prisoners who wanted access to the toilet had to wait for up to an hour for a response, once their bell had been rung. Since then, management has increased the night patrol by one officer, who is located in Younger hall. We have been assured that there has been a marked improvement, and that the average time from a prisoner indicating that they wish to go to the toilet to actually being allowed out is now somewhere in the region of 30 minutes. We received that information this morning from Cornton Vale.
Did you receive that information this morning? I have concerns about the fact that the evidence that I am seeking conflicts throughout, but even 30 minutes is not—
Yes, even 30 minutes is not acceptable.
I emphasise that it takes 30 minutes during patrol periods when the jail is in lock down. The process for unlocking someone takes a long time because of security issues. There has been significant improvement compared with the situation that existed before the extra officer was placed on patrol duties.
When did that extra officer go on?
I cannot be exact, but I understand that the extra officer is a fairly recent addition to the night-shift patrol.
It looks as if the pressure from committee members and others may at last be having some effect.
In the chief inspector's annual report, the ultimate paragraph of the section on Glenochil says:
"More importantly, what is still required, is the development and implementation of an integrated national policy for the management of young offenders—who amount to 13% of the overall prison population, and over 30% of the remand population."
Will you expand on that? What measures should be included in such a strategy?
A great deal could be written, and has been written, about how to manage young offenders. In my view, it comes down to priorities. Young offenders should have the greatest priority, especially for rehabilitation and for measures to deal with issues such as drug misuse. That should be the Prison Service's overriding priority, if for no other reason than to prevent today's young offenders from becoming tomorrow's adult prisoners.
On the practical measures, I would like to see us get past having people idle behind doors as was mentioned earlier, so that every young offender—and I mean every young offender—has a purposeful day. That is perhaps some distance away, when changes to the escorting system bite, but perhaps now that my former deputy chief inspector is deputy governor at Polmont, we will see some movement and some practical measures elsewhere.
The practical measure that I would most like to see concerns the selection and training of staff. Some individuals are not good at dealing with young offenders. Similarly, some are very good with young offenders but are not good at dealing with female offenders. I have not seen any coherent attempt to select prison officers to deal with young offenders, apart from one small experiment in Rannoch hall in Polmont. I would like to see that replicated across the board.
Prison officers should be gradually selected and trained to deal with young offenders. That would take one to two years—or perhaps three—to bite fully, but once it was done, we would have the fully integrated policy that I have been talking about. Rather as at Peterhead, we need individuals who can act as role models, but we would need all the prison officers to be trained, not just 70 per cent of them.
Once we are able to channel those individuals, we can ensure that all young offenders have a purposeful day. They should all be out at sport and the like. Every time I go to Polmont, although I know that the gym gets used, I never see the sports field or the swimming pool being used. I would like to see the young offenders having a really full purposeful day—as would, I am sure, members of the public. The public would be appalled to find out just how many offenders are behind doors.
This may make Malcolm McLennan a little bit uncomfortable, but I know that he has every intention to put right as much as he can. A lot comes down to the management that we have now. In addition, we need the change to the escort system, which needs to start soon. We need to get down to selecting and training prison officers for discrete groups.
I am glad to hear what you are saying.
When Pauline McNeill and I accompanied you and Mr Dustin to the last inspection of Polmont, I was in Lomond hall and saw large numbers of very young men sitting around doing very little—and nothing constructive. That appeared to be the pattern for the vast majority of them. If we are serious about the rehabilitative aspect of prison—as I hope we are—it is important that we engage those people in some constructive activity.
We should give Mr McLennan a quick opportunity to defend Polmont.
Malcolm McLennan (HM Inspectorate of Prisons for Scotland):
I have been there only two weeks.
There is no need to defend it if you have been there only two weeks.
It is much easier to criticise things than it is to fix them. However, we cannot wait on the new escort provisions coming in. We have taken some action in partnership with the local branch of the Prison Officers Association Scotland to try to solve the problem for ourselves in the near future. We also have plans for a timetable that should ensure that everybody has an equal opportunity in the programmes of activities. I am hopeful that we will be able to put that in place by the end of the year.
In his statement, the chief inspector questioned the point of short-term prison sentences. Does he consider that sufficient credible alternatives to custody are available for offenders who are currently on short-term sentences?
I am not honestly sure. The only time that I have been asked to look at the criminal justice system across the board was when I looked into the review "Women Offenders—A Safer Way". I looked at everything that was available for women offenders and I must admit that the options were patchy across Scotland. A lot of changes have taken place since, but I suspect that that is still true. Whether a wide range of options is available will depend on which area—which sheriffdom—you are in.
More options must be considered, but every time that I talk to sheriffs they say, "Oh, you sound a bit critical of us. Don't you realise that we have the problem of not having enough credible alternatives?" What is a credible alternative—one that the public have confidence in? At what point does the public feel confidence? That seems to be a chicken-and-egg situation.
Over the past eight years, I have seen positive changes. On whether that is true throughout Scotland, I would be out of my depth in attempting an answer.
Richard Lochhead and I will raise points about Aberdeen and Maureen Macmillan will raise points about Inverness.
You heard the minister's evidence, which touched lightly on the Craiginches report. Given that the minister has said that he will visit Craiginches, can you bring the committee up to date on points that I have raised on the state of remand facilities, the failure of drug rehabilitation services and other general issues?
Before we publish a report, I get in touch with the governor of the establishment and ask what has happened since the inspection. The inspection may have taken place three or four months earlier; in the case of Craiginches, it was two months earlier. The reason for doing that is to enable me to say, at any press conference, that certain things have changed or improved. The aim of inspections is to report on good practice or, where there is not good practice, to work towards end results. The report on Aberdeen was especially bad, but Malcolm McLennan and I made it our business to go back there last Wednesday before the press conference the next day.
When we walked into the management area, the first thing that struck us was that the governor now had a much more experienced management team, with more members than before. That was a huge sea change. I do not want to go into details on all the personalities, but I believe that the governor now has the management team that she needs to make progress in the face of the huge drug problem in the north-east. In the past, the management team was not configured in the right way to deal with that. My inspectors can comment on some of the additional measures that were in place, but I will mention that, as well as the additional five staff, who make a significant difference, the situation with regard to escorting will be improved by payments.
When we walked round the prison, we could see that it was a lot cleaner than it had been before, which was reassuring.
What heartened me most was the fact that, although the response was rather wishy-washy, the governor is quite clear that B hall will be gradually refurbished and used to house drug-free prisoners. That means that the rest of the staff in A hall can be reconfigured to allow them to deal better with the drug problem, which, at the moment, is spread across the prison. Furthermore, we heard of plans for reconfiguration of the health centre, which we have said has been needed for five years. There is also talk of examining ways in which the accommodation and the staffing can cope with the huge explosion in numbers.
It might sound as if I am saying, "I told you so", but I want to read out what I recommended be done five years ago, as that is what is being done now. I said:
"A detailed survey of local custodial trends should be undertaken, accompanied at the very least by much more robust contingency planing for a burgeoning prisoner population; this should include staffing levels, as well as buildings".
A few years have been lost, but at least progress is now being made. Not all the shortcomings will be solved in the next few months, but I would hope that there will be significant change in the longer term. This inspection is about drawing a line in the sand. I became frustrated with the situation and felt that we had to say that enough was enough and that progress had to be made. The prison headquarters has responded to that and staff in Aberdeen will react positively to the fact that they are better resourced and will be better able to deal with situations that arise.
However, you had to lob a grenade before anything was done.
We have lobbed a few grenades.
You had to lob a bigger than normal grenade in this case, though. You are telling us that Craiginches has been the forgotten prison for a long time.
We have known about the huge drug problem for some time. Various measures have been proposed to help the situation—Malcolm McLennan was up there so often he was almost an honorary member of staff—but, each time, it was always hoped that some other measure would deal with the problems. This time, however, I think that we have got the answers.
To be fair to those in the prison headquarters, their response said that many of the measures that were suggested were already in train and that if we had inspected the prison a few weeks later, the situation would have been much better. We often hear that, however.
I welcome Richard Lochhead to the committee. Richard has taken a great interest in Craiginches prison.
I thank the committees for allowing me to ask a couple of quick questions.
I congratulate the chief inspector on his tenacity in relation to Craiginches prison and I am glad that it has finally resulted in some action.
I am in a difficult and frustrating position because, as a representative of North-East Scotland, I have watched Aberdeen become virtually the crime capital of Scotland, with double the national average of housebreakings. As a result of the fact that Grampian has the second-worst problem with drug misuse in the country, we have a lot of drug-related crime. Many of the addicts end up in Craiginches prison, which is why it is frustrating to see that it has taken nearly five years for action to be taken to address that trend.
Is enough now being done in relation to drug rehabilitation? Is more likely to be done in the future? What role do you think that Craiginches and other prisons that have specific problems with drugs should play? As we know, around 80 per cent of inmates in Craiginches have some connection with drugs, and 80 per cent of crime in the north-east is drug related. Should we be thinking outside the box in terms of the Scottish Prison Service's role in drug rehabilitation? Should we have special prisons devoted to rehabilitation? What ideas do you have?
We said it in a report five years ago, and we have said it again in the most recent report: Craiginches has a very positive role to play in tackling the drug problem. For a start, once individuals are in the prison, the clinics that are provided for them are available on tap, whereas getting hold of people out in the community is a lot more difficult. There are people with problems inside the prison, and there is no question in my mind but that injecting is going on there, as the problem ranges through the whole gamut of drug abuse.
A great deal can be done by all in the work force in a prison such as Craiginches to home in on those individuals and send them out with lesser habits. The first step towards that is the governor's recognition that B hall will eventually become drug free. That means that, in turn, officers in A hall will be able to focus properly on the inmates in A hall and slowly begin to have some effect on them. Craiginches has a positive role to play, but what we have been trying to say over the past five years is that it has not been resourced or managed to deal with the problem. I hope that it will be so resourced now; it must be, or it will be overwhelmed, of that I have no doubt.
I shall return to that subject if we have time, but I am aware that Maureen Macmillan has to leave at 4.30 pm and I want her to have the opportunity to ask about Inverness.
I was concerned to read the recently published report on the pressures on Inverness prison in terms of both space and staff morale. The report said that there were difficulties in delivering programmes and that drug testing had stalled. I realise that the report on a follow-up inspection has recently been published. Has there been any improvement at Inverness prison? Is the prison managing to cope with the high numbers of remand prisoners and growing numbers of drug users in the north of Scotland?
Our latest report has not actually been published. It is available at Porterfield and at the SPS headquarters, and I have a copy of it in front of me now. After Aberdeen, which we always thought was a great wee jail—or so it was five years ago—the jewel in the crown of the SPS has always been Porterfield. I say that with all deference to the north-east and Peterhead.
We have always said a great deal of good about Porterfield, as it is a small and compact prison and there is a good staff-prisoner relationship there. Over the past few years, we have begun to worry a little about Porterfield. Previously, the main problem among prisoners arriving at the gates was alcohol, but we began to notice the drug problem shifting. We said that, while the chance existed, the right strategies had to be put in place to deal with what was almost certainly coming. We talked to the police a fair bit about the fact that the drug problem was coming. It has now arrived in that area like a big steamroller, but I do not think that the prison has yet reconfigured itself enough to deal with what is beginning to come through the doors.
My most recent report on Inverness is generally positive, but there is no point in simply going round and handing out plaudits and one must always note concerns before things go wrong. I said in that report that problems have increased,
"possibly due to the combined effects of new shift patterns, high sickness levels, the demand for court escorts and 23% overcrowding. These are the first worrying indications that what was previously a most positive regime could start to falter, if not addressed".
That could lead to problems not dissimilar to those that began to occur three years ago at Aberdeen. I see the start of such problems at Porterfield. I hope that the area director concerned—the same director who looks after Aberdeen—will take note and say, "Hang on, I'm getting a double message here. We need to address that now." I hope that that is what happens.
I hope that committees and MSPs will keep an eye on the situation to see that it is addressed and does not deteriorate further.
I am still generally impressed with Inverness, I have to say.
Yes—some super things are happening there, particularly in education. However, there is a growing drugs problem in the north, and there is pressure on space at Porterfield because of the increase in remand prisoners. We must address that.
When we looked at the figures this morning, overcrowding had increased and Inverness was the second most overcrowded prison.
Some members have pressing engagements, and we cannot extend the meeting further or we will not be quorate. I apologise to Richard Lochhead for that.
I thank Clive Fairweather for his robust but measured contribution, both in oral evidence and in his reports. We all recognise your genuine commitment to a reformed prison service for the 21st century. I would also like to thank you personally, because I came into Parliament knowing nothing about prisons but I think that I am beginning to get a handle on them after three years—I have certainly visited enough of them. Thank you again for your visits to the committees, and we wish you well in your future career. We also wish your successor well. He has a hard act to follow, but I am sure that he will be up to it, and I look forward to doing business with him.
He is up in the gallery today, and I am sure that he will hit the ground running.
Thank you very much.
Meeting closed at 16:31.