Official Report 295KB pdf
The next item of business is a debate on motion S7M-00469, in the name of Neil Gray, on achieving a sustainable prison population. I invite members who wish to speak in the debate to press their request-to-speak button now.
14:32
On the day after my appointment as justice secretary, I visited HMP Edinburgh to see the level of pressure that the Scottish Prison Service is facing due to an increasing prison population. It is clear that staff want to focus on rehabilitation and reducing reoffending but that it is increasingly difficult for them to do so. I put on the record my thanks to the dedicated prison officers and staff across the prison estate, who are working tirelessly to maintain a safe and supportive environment for those in their care.
Although recorded crime in Scotland has fallen overall, over the longer term there has been a marked increase in the reporting, investigation and prosecution of serious offences including sexual crime and serious organised crime. I welcome the fact that, through the police and the courts, our justice system is ensuring that justice is done. Victims show enormous bravery and trust in our legal system in reporting crime, and I want that to continue. We are strengthening confidence in the justice system and ensuring that police, prosecutors and the courts have the powers that they need to bring perpetrators to justice.
I am, of course, concerned by the rise in sexual and domestic abuse crimes. Although I welcome the fact that victims have the confidence to come forward, including on historical crimes, we must remain focused on tackling such horrendous crimes and, importantly, prevent them from happening.
Sexual and domestic abuse crimes are overwhelmingly perpetrated by men against women and, ultimately, men must change their behaviour. The Scottish Government-funded Caledonian system is a good example of a community-based programme that aims to address the behaviour of men who have been convicted of domestic abuse, alongside providing support to affected women and children. My priority is to prevent crimes, but, when they happen, prisons must be a safe and effective place where such offending behaviour can be challenged and addressed through programmes and other rehabilitative work.
More individuals now remain in prison for longer, which creates a cumulative demand on capacity across the estate and also means that the population is increasingly more complex to manage, including dealing with health and social care needs.
I make no apology for saying that serious crimes should merit serious sentences. Scotland shows a clear and persistent trend of increasing the length of average custodial sentences, including a 37 per cent rise between 2014-15 and 2023-24. Those figures should not be interpreted as being solely attributable to sentence inflation, because other factors, such as the mix of offences in cases heard in court, continue to apply.
The remand population also remains high, with complicated and detailed cases taking longer to conclude. Scotland is not unique in experiencing prison population pressures, with many comparable countries recording increases in their prison populations. However, the fact that we have one of the highest such populations in western Europe must be addressed.
I thank the cabinet secretary for giving way. He made a point about the remand population. He is quite right that one in four members of our prison population is on remand. The reality is, though, that there is a slow throughput of individuals held on remand, and that is because of the backlog of court cases, especially those heard in the High Court. What specific measures will the cabinet secretary introduce to speed up the appearance of such individuals in the High Court to face justice?
Stephen Kerr is correct. We have discussed that matter before, and I believe that the work that has been done on summary case management, which has sped up the process for summary cases, can and should be extended. We are working on that and, based on my discussions with the Lord President, the Lord Advocate and others, I am confident that we will get through the High Court backlog.
However, reducing the remand population presents an additional challenge, of which Stephen Kerr is aware, because a significant proportion of those currently on remand for serious offences can be expected to become part of the sentenced population. Therefore, regardless of whether individuals are on remand or otherwise, we must take action now.
Scotland has taken a number of steps to alleviate the pressures. A reconfiguration of the estate realised about 400 additional places, and two new prisons will deliver 460 spaces. I expect HMP Highland to be completed in spring 2027—which is later than planned, due to construction issues—and HMP Glasgow, which I visited last week, is due to be completed in 2028.
We have extended the eligibility for home detention curfew and have expanded the use of alternatives to remand, with bail supervision numbers in 2024 at the highest they have been in 10 years.
We implemented the emergency early release scheme between November 2025 and April this year, which saw 614 individuals released early, 60 per cent of whom were released within three months of their original release date.
We also incrementally changed the point of a sentence that certain short-term prisoners are required to serve in custody to 30 per cent, which resulted in an estimated sustained reduction of about 550 prisoners. That is equivalent to the total design capacity of HMP Grampian.
I am engaging directly across the justice system to identify areas where action can be taken quickly to help reduce the pressure further. We are embedding multidisciplinary teams in courts to ensure that critical and relevant information is available to judges ahead of decisions on custody, which is helping to reduce avoidable periods of short remand that are necessitated for further information.
We are undertaking analysis to understand the complex reasons why individuals fail to comply with community payback orders and bail conditions. CPOs are delivering strong outcomes, with 71 per cent successfully completed—most of them without breaches—during 2024-25. I believe that we can do better to address the reasons for breaches and improve that success rate, and I am working to identify what interventions and support will drive improvements in compliance and thus reduce avoidable, short-term custodial sentences.
Despite those measures, today’s prison population stands at 8,549, having recently peaked at 8,603, which is about 800 places above the estate’s designed capacity. That poses an unacceptable level of risk to those living and working in Scottish prisons and to the wider justice system.
Additionally, reasonable worst-case long-term projections indicate that without action demand for prison places will rise to about 9,500 within the next decade. Therefore, further action is necessary now to put our prisons on a sustainable footing and ensure that our justice system can focus on rehabilitation and reducing reoffending without compromising public safety.
Will the cabinet secretary take this opportunity to accept, with some degree of humility, that the prison capacity situation is a direct result of the neglect of his predecessors in the office that he holds to deal with the issue as it came along? There was a lot of warning and expectation about the level of the prison population, but very little was done to deal with it proactively. Will the cabinet secretary accept that this is a moment for him, with humility, to say sorry for that lack of planning and action?
I have already referenced that we are building two new prisons and that we are expanding capacity. We already have one of the highest levels of custody per head of population in western Europe; we need to tackle that issue alongside the capacity issues that I will go on to discuss.
Attainment of a sustainable prison population will require fundamental change. The independent Scottish Sentencing and Penal Policy Commission’s evidence-based report recognised the need for a greater focus on community interventions to reduce reoffending and for rehabilitative work in prison to support the effective reintegration of individuals into the community. The commission was clear that prevention is the most effective route to a sustained reduction in the prison population.
My first priority is to prevent crime before it happens and, as a consequence, to reduce the number of victims. Therefore, the Government will continue to intervene early to steer people away from crime and focus on areas such as substance dependency, health, poverty, homelessness and employability, which are all significant contributing factors to offending.
I will be clear, as the Government has always been, that, for those people who pose the highest risk, the removal of liberty is an important and integral part of our justice system and that prisons will continue to be necessary. However, we want to see less crime so that we have fewer victims, which is why support is needed even after an offence has been committed if we are to minimise the risk of an individual reoffending and returning to prison following release. That is why my priority is the prevention of crime and further reoffending behaviour.
That approach makes financial sense: every prison place costs us more than £52,000 a year; this financial year, we are spending nearly £510 million in resource funding for the Scottish Prison Service to run our jails. However, evidence shows that community sentencing in areas such as non-violent crimes is more effective, with the reconviction rate for those people who were given community payback orders in 2022-23 at 28.6 per cent, compared with 53.2 per cent for those people who completed custodial sentences of one year or less. That approach is also significantly cheaper to the taxpayer, with an estimated cost of a CPO per unit between £1,251 and £6,778, depending on its requirements and complexity.
Today, I am proposing bold reform that will strike the right balance across custodial sentences, community sentencing and the need to robustly protect victims and the public. Other countries have achieved reductions by changing their approach, and we can, too. I will outline those plans in more detail.
First, I have instructed the Scottish Prison Service to exhaust all options for further maximisation of the existing estate and to set out an approach to further increasing the number of places, which will include the affordability and deliverability of additional capacity, with consideration of temporary modular accommodation and further housing blocks at existing prisons. I expect to receive business cases on those proposals soon.
Alongside more places, a smarter approach to custody is needed, and I remain committed to using all levers at our disposal, including continuing to expand the use of home detention curfew, which supports reintegration of individuals by providing for their structured return to the community. We have already made GPS technology available, and I want to expand that: we will now introduce a geographical pilot of GPS with bail, building on action that we have already taken to allow radio-frequency monitoring of bail curfews.
I also want to make full use of community-based alternatives where it is safe, proportionate and effective to do so, because we know that short custodial sentences can increase the likelihood of reoffending, whereas community sentences are more effective at supporting lasting rehabilitation. A statutory review of the national strategy for community justice, which sets out the long-term aims and priority actions that strengthen alternatives to custody, has been published today and will give stakeholders the opportunity to have their say on the direction of community justice.
I am also publishing several proposed changes to make a sustained change in our prison population, with a focus on rehabilitation and reducing reoffending, which will be the subject of an eight-week public consultation period. The consultation will seek views on amending the definition of a short-term prisoner from
“those serving less than four years”
to
“those serving less than five years”
to better reflect the existing sentencing powers of the courts and to bring Scotland into alignment with the Council of Europe’s position that sentences of five years or more constitute long-term imprisonment.
The consultation will also seek views on how we can deliver a more effective approach to custody, including—as the Scottish Sentencing and Penal Policy Commission recommended—extending the presumption against short sentences from a threshold of 12 months to one of 24 months, enhancing community payback orders to increase confidence in their effectiveness and support their wider use, and strengthening the bail test to reduce the number of people remanded with no real prospect of a custodial sentence of less than 24 months.
The Scottish Sentencing and Penal Policy Commission noted that the current arrangement for long-term prisoners, whereby some are released into the community on non-parole licence six months before the end of their sentence, does not allow for effective reintegration, and it recommended that those individuals should have more time under supervision in the community on licence. The vast majority of long-term prisoners will, ultimately, be released from custody. The question is, therefore, not whether those prisoners will return to the community, but how safely that return can be managed.
I agree with the commission that an extended period of supervision could benefit the management of risk and, ultimately, reduce reoffending. Therefore, the consultation will also seek views on release arrangements for long-term prisoners, including amending the point of release on non-parole licence for some long-term prisoners to two thirds of their sentence, with the remainder of their sentence being served in the community under strict supervision and licence conditions. That is the position that we had in place before 2016, and prisoners convicted before that date still have that in place. The consultation will also seek views on extending those changes to those on extended sentences.
It is imperative that we find the right balance among punishment, rehabilitation, risk management and reintegration. The proposal would enable a more proportionate approach, in which an individual still serves their sentence but with a greater proportion served in the community, under supervision, and therefore a greater likelihood of their successful reintegration into society, which will reduce the risk that they reoffend. Robust safeguards are in place to manage long-term prisoners in the community who are subject to individualised risk assessment and licence conditions. They must abide by all conditions on their licence and can be recalled to prison. Individuals convicted of sexual offences and some violent offences will also be subject to multi-agency public protection arrangements.
I recognise that the proposed changes are bold, and I hope that they can contribute to a thoughtful debate today on the consequences of not addressing the rise in our prison population. The outcomes of any sentence for a crime committed should be that justice is served and no further reoffending happens. Change is needed, and the consultation provides an opportunity to hear the views of victims, partners and the wider public on all those measures. I assure colleagues that my officials and I will continue to work with victim support organisations throughout that process.
I believe that the proposals outlined today will help us to strike the right balance between recognising the concerns of victims and survivors and charting a clear course towards a sustainable prison population in the long term. They will ensure that prevention is at the heart of our system, with prisons housing those who pose the greatest risk, rehabilitating them to effectively support successful reintegration into society and, ultimately, reducing crime and protecting the public. Less crime and fewer victims are the outcomes that we all wish to see.
I move,
That the Parliament recognises the scale and complexity of the current prison population, which is above the design and operational capacity of the estate and causes significant associated operational and safety risks for prison staff; notes that Scotland has one of the highest prison populations in western Europe; acknowledges the underlying drivers, including the growing number of individuals convicted of serious violent and sexual offences who receive longer sentences, reflecting progress in how the justice system supports victims and holds offenders to account; notes that the cost per prisoner per year to the public purse is £52,000; recognises the importance of effective rehabilitation to reduce re-offending and to benefit the communities that individuals return to; agrees that public safety is paramount and that it is vital that victims are supported and have confidence in the justice system, and agrees, therefore, that a balanced package of measures to increase capacity in the prison estate, expand effective community sentencing, and enact preventative measures to stop people entering or re-entering the prison system, are necessary to achieve a sustainable prison population now and in the future.
14:48
Scottish Labour welcomes the opportunity to have an early discussion on the state of the Scottish prison system. There is a lot in the amendments from the other parties with which we agree. We have just heard a considerable announcement. I will address some of it, albeit briefly. I hope that the Presiding Officer will consider that we all heard the announcement only an hour ago and have to try to respond to it.
I reiterate what I have said before: it is a national disgrace that we are nowhere near solving the problem of an overcrowded prison system that is making it extremely difficult for staff to manage prisons, and is making things extremely difficult for prisoners themselves. As we have heard from HM Inspectorate of Prisons for Scotland, we are breaching international standards and human rights. I have consistently raised my concerns about prisoners not being guaranteed time out of their cells, and a number of prisoners have written to me, as a criminal justice spokesperson, because they cannot get access to the rehabilitation programmes that it is vital for them to do in order to be considered for release back into the community.
We must be clear about the severe state of the Scottish prison system. I do not believe that that was inevitable—Stephen Kerr alluded to that in his intervention—and the reality is that, in 20 years of Scottish National Party Government, ministers did not even consider that there might be an increase in the prison population. Henry McLeish warned of that in 2008, and he was not the only person to do so. There have been warnings that it could happen, yet here we are.
The Cabinet Secretary for Justice has just taken up his post, and I respect the fact that he is at least attempting to put some bold proposals out there. I will address some of them briefly. Changing the definition of long-term sentences from more than four years to more than five years has serious implications. In my understanding, that means that there are prisoners who have committed serious offences who would be eligible for release under the rules of the short-term prisoner regime. Those who have followed the debate will know that that is early release at 30 per cent of the sentence served, and the definition of short-term sentence would increase to sentences of less than five years.
I have some preliminary concerns about that. On the release of long-term prisoners at 60 per cent or two thirds of their sentence, when I was not in Parliament, one of the big issues around the release of long-term prisoners was that the public thought that a prisoner’s sentence would be served in jail, and nobody could really follow the number of years that they would spend there. There should be transparency in sentencing, and the public should understand the sentence that is given by the courts—I hope that the cabinet secretary will take that on board in the consultation, because, for Scottish Labour, that is fundamental.
Questions remain about the potential changes. What investment is the Scottish Government prepared to make to commit in the longer term to robust alternatives, such as GPS monitoring, which is referred to in the Scottish Labour amendment, to ensure that communities are safe?
I do not mind saying that I have had this conversation with many previous cabinet secretaries. Scottish Labour has said that we are in favour of robust alternatives to custody, but, over a very long period of time, there has not been any serious approach to that.
Community sentencing cannot be a tick-box exercise.
I recognise Pauline McNeill’s long-standing commitment to looking at community alternatives to custody. Does she welcome what I am setting out to do in providing an expansion in GPS technology for bail management and home detention curfew, in order to give reassurance around the community management of offenders?
Yes, I do. I would like an early indication of additional investment in GPS technology. Considering all that we would need to do to provide safety for communities, I think that investment in GPS technology would need to be front ended.
Karyn McCluskey, head of Community Justice Scotland, pointed out that good, structured, unpaid work helps to repair the harm that people have caused and gives them purpose. We know that. There is power in seeing the results of our labour, but we need such sentences to be more robust, and we need sheriffs presiding over them in order for us to have confidence in them.
Another reason for our overcrowded prisons is extremely high reoffending rates, particularly for those serving short-term prison sentences. There has been a revolving door. We already know about that, and there is evidence to show that there is less reoffending with community sentencing. The rate is far lower if people are given a community payback order—just one quarter of people on those are reconvicted within a year.
Will the member take an intervention?
The member cannot take an intervention, as she is already in additional time.
I will conclude with a specific point on deaths in custody, which the Criminal Justice Committee had a brief chat about on Wednesday morning. There was a promise in the recommendations that families would get unfettered access to the prison system to understand what happened. That is an example of a recommendation that has not been implemented. My plea is that, in this parliamentary session, there should be more implementation of things that had already been recommended in the first place; otherwise, the public will further lose confidence in the justice system.
14:54
I thank you, cabinet secretary, and Pauline McNeill.
I am interested in your proposals. We agree that the Scottish Prison Service continues to operate in crisis management mode. Sadly, under the Scottish National Party Government, prison governors have become experts in crisis management.
The public, victims, prison staff and the agencies that are involved in managing prisoners’ release deserve a prison service that functions safely, effectively and sustainably. You clearly said that. Since 2020, the number of long-term prisoners has risen significantly and serious offences, including organised crime and sexual offences, are on the increase. In addition, there is a high remand population of prisoners who are awaiting trial or sentencing, which puts additional pressure on capacity.
Since late 2025, the prison population has surged. I have the figure 8,400, but I think that you said that it was 8,500.
I should correct the statistic that I gave. It is 8,459 not 8,549. There was a typo in the speech.
So, we are looking at 106 per cent overcapacity. That is one of the highest levels ever recorded. We are all in agreement that that is unsustainable, is unsafe and represents an ineffective Scottish Prison Service.
After 19 years in government, the SNP has failed to expand prison capacity quickly enough and avert the crisis with an effective approach to reducing reoffending. The delayed replacement and construction project for HMP Glasgow has worsened the situation. You mentioned HMP Highland, which is also delayed further. HMP Glasgow has escalating costs, which are eye watering. They were originally estimated to be between £100 million and £400 million but rose to £1 billion, with a prisoner capacity of 1,344.
The question is whether the Scottish Government is satisfied that that is a sustainable approach in terms of cost, prisoner capacity and satisfying the public about value for money. I hear that you are planning some pods on existing prison estates. I presume that that is to increase capacity at a quicker pace. Barlinnie prison, which was originally designed to hold 987 prisoners, now frequently holds 1,400 depending on the daily intake and transfers.
However, I understand that the SNP Government is pinning all its hopes on early prisoner release rather than long-term planning to establish a prison estate that is fit for purpose with sustainable funding models. You have added some information on that already. That approach puts the public, victims and prison staff at risk.
The message is clear: the Scottish Government is failing our prison service and is soft on crime. There is overcrowding and crisis management, using desperate early release measures, designed to mitigate years of Government failures. That is a high-risk strategy for victims and the public, who deserve to be and feel safe.
The Prisoners (Early Release) (Scotland) Act 2025 allowed prisoners sentenced to less than four years to be released after 40 per cent of their sentence had been served. That was the original figure, but my understanding is that it is now 30 per cent and that that four-year threshold will be changed. In cases of domestic abuse and sexual offences, prisoners can be released after serving only 50 per cent of their sentence. The public are rightly dismayed at that piece of legislation and need to know how the Scottish Government will ensure their safety, especially that of victims of crime.
I am happy to hear that you are discussing domestic abuse and sexual crimes in particular. It sounds like that is one of the Government’s priorities. Perpetrators of domestic abuse and sexual offences should be given a clear message: your crimes are completely unacceptable and you pose a real and persistent danger, especially to women and children. Domestic abuse has become normalised in our society. That must stop.
As a former police officer, I completely understand how devastating those crimes are for victims and their families. Police Scotland recorded 64,967 incidents of domestic abuse in 2024-25. The scale of the problem is immense, and I appreciate your acknowledging that, cabinet secretary.
Does the Scottish Government think that having someone serve only 50 per cent of a prison sentence for that type of crime is acceptable? I accept that some prisoners may be eligible for early release, but, after 19 years of governing, the Scottish Government needs to come up with a better plan than just relying on mass early release. What we have heard sounds like a desperate, knee-jerk plan, but I appreciate what you have said, cabinet secretary, and look forward to discussing with you the measures around the rehabilitation and management of offenders in the community.
On rehabilitation, we need a fresh pair of eyes on the whole system. The measures that are used to tackle drug addiction, community sentences, electronic monitoring, treatment and addiction recovery programmes that are designed to rehabilitate offenders and protect victims too often fail.
The data on prison population that was published in 2025 showed that 63 per cent of current prisoners have been incarcerated before, which highlights the revolving door of the prison population. I appreciate the cabinet secretary’s acknowledgment that that needs to be addressed. We are not only failing victims and the public; we are failing the offenders, who are stuck in an eternal cycle of reoffending. Prison staff are at their wits’ end trying to manage the unmanageable.
The Scottish Government has created and presided over that shambolic set of affairs, which puts criminals first and victims last. It cannot go on.
I move amendment S7M-00469.1, to leave out from “acknowledges” to end, and insert:
“notes that data on prison population published in 2025 show that 63% of current prisoners have been incarcerated before, highlighting the highly cyclical nature of the prison population; expresses concern that the Scottish Government has sought to attribute the unsustainable prison population to external factors, while not fully acknowledging the extent to which failings in both its rehabilitation programme and its approach to tackling the longer term issues have a comparatively much bigger impact; agrees that these failings, combined with the use of early release, put the public at increased risk, and resolves that more intensive support is required to support individuals out of a life of crime and offending, alongside the introduction of minimum sentences for crimes as a stronger deterrent.”
I remind all members that they should always speak through the chair.
15:01
Our prison system is not working. Like so many other institutions, including our national health service and our schools, prisons reflect the society that they serve. That society is deeply unfair and profoundly unequal. Schools struggle to help young people to learn and thrive, as too many children arrive in the classroom hungry. Hospitals struggle to treat people with physical and mental health conditions that stem from the massive health inequalities that we still have not tackled. It is the same with our prisons.
Our prisons are beyond capacity. That is because our imprisonment rate is significantly above the European average and is even above the rates of a string of non-democratic countries such as China and Saudi Arabia. It is not because crime is out of control in Scotland. Overall levels of crime are about half what they were in 1991. However, we have left prisons, just like our schools and NHS, to pick up the pieces of failures elsewhere in society. That does not serve prisoners well, it does not serve prison staff well and it does not serve the communities that will receive those prisoners after their incarceration well at all.
As we have all accepted with the Promise, our care system is failing, and that shows up in our prisons, where about 30 per cent of prisoners have had previous experience of the care system. Nobody disputes that we have a major drugs crisis in our country, and it is no coincidence that most prisoners enter prison with drug challenges. Many prisoners will leave with a drug problem, too, prison having done little to help them.
Far too often, we take people who have already been failed by society and place them in institutions that fail them again—institutions that are increasingly unable to guarantee basic standards of welfare, dignity and human rights. Just yesterday, the Criminal Justice Committee heard that the United Nations’ Nelson Mandela rules, which lay out the bare minimum standards that are expected, are not being consistently upheld in Scottish prisons.
We have also had instances of foreign courts refusing to extradite prisoners to Scotland because basic conditions are so poor. If our prisons cannot guarantee basic standards of safety, dignity and human rights, what confidence can we possibly have that they are doing the far more demanding work of rehabilitation?
It is no surprise, then, that prisons often perform worse than alternatives when it comes to reducing reoffending and preventing future harm. Short sentences for non-violent crimes, in particular, for which there are the clearest alternatives, result in some of the highest rates of prisoners leaving prison and coming into conflict with the law again. However, 73 per cent of the custodial sentences that were received in 2023-24 were for one year or less, and sentences of three to six months have been the most common over the past decade, making up 30 per cent of all custodial sentences in 2023-24.
For those who have committed less serious crimes and are serving shorter sentences, it makes no sense at all to spend, as the motion states, £52,000 per year on prison, given that we know that, in many cases, prison will not help them to stop reoffending. We cannot build our way out of this challenge, because building more prison places does not address why our prison population is so high in the first place.
Therefore, we need to totally rethink what prisons should look like and what they are there to do. Scottish Greens believe that we need a justice system that relies far less than it does today on imprisonment and far more on prevention, restoration and rehabilitation. With greater use of effective alternatives to custody, and sentencing that follows the evidence, we will need fewer but better resourced prisons that can genuinely support rehabilitation and reintegration.
That approach is working right now in other countries. As is the case in Scotland, crime in the Netherlands has fallen over recent decades, but, unlike here, that has resulted in significant falls in the prison population. Between 2005 and 2010, there was a 44 per cent fall in the population of Dutch prisons, and the Netherlands closed 20 prisons. That is because they are making greater use of community sentencing and focusing on prevention rather than imprisonment.
Will the member take an intervention?
No, not just now.
Prison reform should allow us to do the upstream work that we know will help people to avoid prison in the first place. The Scottish Government’s penal policy advisers have cited evidence from the Edinburgh study of youth transitions and crime that shows that poverty, poor housing, unemployment and weak community infrastructure increase the risks of social exclusion and fuel distrust and disaffection, which ultimately increases the risk of conflict with the law. The same advisers have said that, when people do fall foul of the law, we need much more focus on early intervention pathways, because formal prosecution often escalates problems, increases stigma and limits opportunities for change.
Some people pose a significant risk of harm to society. We must have ways of preventing such harm. Indeed, harm reduction must be a cornerstone of our justice system. However, for many people—I would argue that this applies to the vast majority of those who are currently incarcerated, including women, neurodiverse people and people with mental health issues—the evidence overwhelmingly shows that prisons not only do not work but actually make things worse.
We cannot keep doing the same thing over and over again and expect different results—there is a word for that. However, we do not have to do so, because other countries have shown us the way. We must understand the socioeconomic causes of crime and tackle them accordingly. When people commit crime, we must exhaust the whole suite of approaches that work better to punish appropriately and rehabilitate before considering prisons, which most often do neither. When incarceration becomes necessary, those places must have the resources that they need to rehabilitate and genuinely help people to do better in the future. Only then can incarceration genuinely be the last resort, rather than a place where we warehouse the problems that society has chosen not to solve.
I move amendment S7M-00469.3, to leave out from second “operational” to end and insert:
“human rights and safety risks for staff and prisoners; further recognises the importance of prioritising harm reduction across the justice system; believes that incarceration should always be the last resort, once all other alternatives have been exhausted; notes that Scotland has one of the highest prison populations in western Europe, including a disproportionate remand population; acknowledges the underlying drivers, including poverty, inequality, homelessness and experience of the care system; notes that the cost per prisoner per year to the public purse is £52,200; recognises the need for effective rehabilitation to reduce offending and re-offending and to benefit the communities that individuals return to; agrees that public safety is paramount and that it is vital that victims and survivors should be at the heart of the justice system, and must be supported and have confidence in it, and agrees, therefore, that a balanced package of measures to expand effective community sentencing and other alternatives to prison, such as restorative justice, bail supervision and supported accommodation, and to enact preventative measures to stop people entering or re-entering the prison system, including sustained investment in housing, mental health services, youth work, addiction services and community support, as part of a transformative justice approach, are necessary to achieve a sustainable prison population now and in the future.”
I remind members that there should be no interruptions or interventions during a first speech. To make his first speech, and to move and speak to amendment S7M-00469.5, I call James Adams.
15:08
I am proud and honoured to have been elected to represent the north-east of Scotland, the area where I was born, grew up and still proudly call home. I am deeply grateful for the trust that voters have placed in me, and I thank everyone who supported me and helped me throughout my journey to get here—in particular, my wife, Melissa, and my parents.
I stand here as a proud Brocher, wi a wee bit of Belger, Cottoner, Quitie and Auld Deer thrown in for gweed measure. My election also means that there are now two former pupils of Fraserburgh academy serving in the Scottish Parliament—the other being Holly Bruce. To my knowledge, this is the first time in our school’s history that this has happened. I know that our school and our town will take great pride in that achievement, just as I do. Come awa the Burry! [Applause.]
I pay tribute to my colleague Douglas Lumsden MP, who worked tirelessly on behalf of the people of the north-east, first as a councillor, then as an MSP and now as an MP. His dedication to public service has been an example to many.
I stood for election to be a strong voice for the communities and industries that are the backbone of the north-east. Our fishing industry is woven into the identity of many coastal communities across the region. It would be remiss of me not to mention my late great-grandfather, Gilbert Buchan, known to folk at home as Seven and a half’s Gib, who was a fisherman, a local councillor and a founding member of the Scottish Fishermen’s Federation. He remains a great inspiration to me and is one of the many reasons why I now stand in this chamber.
The fishing industry is one built on hard work, skills and generations of tradition, and I am proud to say that I have family members and close friends who still go out to sea and risk their lives on a regular basis to put food on our plates. Those who work in the sector deserve to know that their concerns will be heard and that their contribution to Scotland’s food security will be recognised, and I will do just that.
Our farmers and agricultural workers also play a vital role in the life of the north-east, but many face increasing pressures, from rising costs and labour shortages to uncertainty about future support. Farming is not just an industry; it is a way of life that sustains communities across our region.
The oil and gas industry has been a cornerstone of economic success in the north-east and across Scotland. However, in recent years, many workers and families have faced uncertainty as jobs have been lost and investment has declined. The impact of those changes has been felt throughout communities across the region, and the result in the Aberdeen South by-election last week shows that people are fed up with the attitude of the Scottish Government and the UK Labour Government towards the oil and gas sector.
For the past four-plus years, I have had the privilege of working for NHS Grampian while also representing Fraserburgh and District on Aberdeenshire Council. In both roles, I have seen at first hand what the gross underfunding of both organisations has done to local services in my area, and I am committed to keeping pressure on the SNP Government and fighting for a fair share of funding for the north-east of Scotland.
I want everyone across the north-east of Scotland, whether they voted for me or not, to know that I will work tirelessly on their behalf. I will be a strong voice for our communities, fight for the industries that strengthen and sustain our region and ensure that the people of the north-east are heard loud and clear in this Parliament.
Scotland’s prisons have deteriorated under the SNP, and capacity has been pushed to the limit. The early release schemes have been the SNP’s only answer to the overcrowding crisis, which it is responsible for. Victims deserve to have confidence that dangerous offenders will be held to account for their actions. In my region, Peterhead prison—HMP Grampian, as it now is—has had a long and significant place in Scotland’s justice system. The dedicated prison staff who work in challenging environments there, or in any other prison in Scotland, should not have to deal with overcrowding, but criminals must serve their sentences and not be released early to cover the failings of the Government. The Scottish Government must solve this issue in a way that reinstalls the confidence that has been lost in our justice system.
We must also recognise the damage that the SNP has done to public confidence through its mishandling of the transgender prisoner policy. The Isla Bryson case exposed serious failings and raised legitimate concerns about placing biological males in women’s prisons. Public safety, the dignity of female prisoners and the confidence of victims must always come before ideology.
The public expect violent criminals to serve their sentences in full. This is common sense, it protects our communities and it is a principle that I and the Scottish Conservatives will always defend.
I move amendment S7M-00469.5, to leave out from “acknowledges the underlying drivers” to end and insert:
“recognises that the current pressures on Scotland's prison estate were repeatedly highlighted by HM Chief Inspector of Prisons and were described as ‘not unexpected’; notes that prison overcrowding did not emerge suddenly but follows years of warnings regarding prison capacity, rehabilitation, safety and prisoner welfare; rejects any suggestion that the current situation is unavoidable; notes with concern that more than a quarter of Scotland’s prison population is comprised of remand prisoners awaiting the conclusion of court proceedings; believes that persistent court backlogs and delays across the justice system are significant contributors to prison overcrowding and are preventing victims, witnesses and accused individuals from obtaining timely justice; notes that over 1,300 foreign national offenders are currently held within Scotland’s prison estate and believes that greater use should be made of appropriate repatriation arrangements; expresses alarm at the record number of deaths in custody, including a record number of suicides; recognises the impact that overcrowding is having on rehabilitation, purposeful activity and public protection; agrees that public safety, justice for victims and confidence in the rule of law must remain paramount; believes that Scottish Ministers must set out the reasons why repeated warnings regarding overcrowding, remand levels, deaths in custody and prison conditions were not acted upon sooner; further believes that achieving a sustainable prison population requires action to reduce court delays, address the high remand population, improve access to rehabilitation and offender programmes, increase the effective repatriation of foreign national offenders where appropriate, and provide sufficient prison capacity to meet operational demand, and believes that the long-term sustainability of Scotland’s prison population depends upon addressing the underlying causes of overcrowding rather than relying on the early release of prisoners as a substitute for effective management of the justice system.”
15:14
I remind members of my entry in the register of members’ interests, which states that I am still a sitting councillor on Aberdeenshire Council.
On the whole, the motion that the Scottish Government has proposed today is fair, and we welcome the Government’s decision to launch a consultation. Our prison population is too high and costs too much to the public purse. Victim support is paramount and we must work together to rehabilitate offenders. Like much of what the Scottish Government promises, the motion is forward-thinking, liberal and just. However, for the moment, those are still only words on a piece of paper and that have been spoken aloud in this chamber, far from the reality of what people across Scotland face every day.
Scotland’s prisons are again operating at or near critical capacity. Some people are bunked together in, and confined for 23 hours a day in, tiny rooms that were made for one person, in a prison estate that was better suited to previous centuries. That is a serious problem for prison staff, rehabilitation, public confidence and, ultimately, public safety. However, let us be clear: the crux of the matter is that the crisis did not happen overnight, and we need to nail this dragging issue together.
I am a newly elected member—I share that characteristic with more than 60 other members across the Parliament, including some members in the Government. We have come here with fresh ideas, renewed enthusiasm and close ties to the communities that we represent. I share progressive liberal values on this issue as well as on many others with many members across the Parliament, regardless of party affiliation. Therefore, I ask those members to listen and be bold enough to agree.
I say again that the crisis did not appear overnight; the Scottish Government has known for years that prison numbers were rising. Although we welcome action, we are left wondering why that action is, yet again, reactive instead of proactive. The Scottish Government knew that courts were recovering from the pandemic backlog and that more serious cases were progressing through the justice system. It knows that remand numbers remain stubbornly high and that major prison replacement projects are slipping behind schedule.
We welcome the consultation and we are grateful that the Government is providing listening ears to concerns. However, we want to press the Government on the timing of this debate. Instead of planning ahead for decades, these are, once again, emergency measures.
The issue is simple: dangerous offenders should be in prison, victims deserve protection and communities deserve safety. Prison is a punishment, but it should also serve to rehabilitate. We have the tools that are needed to exist in a just society. We have a record high prison population, but we need only look at some of our Scandinavian neighbours for an example of how things can be done differently. However, instead of providing the investment that is needed, we are left patching with Band-Aids while the wraparound care that is needed to make sure that people have support when they are back home is thin, which increases the risk of reoffending.
I call on the Scottish Government to invest, plan strategically and more strategically face the facts—in all areas, but especially concerning our prisons. We need the court backlog to be cleared, we need to fix the root cause of offending and we need remand to be reduced where it is safe and appropriate to do so. We need credible and properly enforced community sentences, we need investment in rehabilitation that cuts reoffending and we need to plan ahead rather than barely cope as we move from one crisis to the next.
My critique today comes not from a place of values but from a place of delivery. I say to my fellow new members across the Parliament: please do not let the next five years be about us sharing values and disagreeing on delivery. We should hold our parties to account and take the actions that Scotland needs.
I move amendment S7M-00469.4, to insert at end:
“; further notes the persistently high remand population and the contribution that court delays and wider pressures within the justice system have on overcrowding in the prison estate; believes that public protection, rehabilitation, alternatives to custody and a reduction in reoffending must be pursued together rather than in competition with one another; further believes that investment in addiction treatment, mental health services, supported housing and effective community justice are essential to reducing offending and easing the pressure on prisons, and calls on the Scottish Government to publish a long-term strategy for achieving a sustainable prison population that commands public confidence and adequately supports victims and their rights to information, protection and safety.”
We move to the open debate.
15:18
I warmly commend the cabinet secretary on his speech, which was a brave one. He proposed some bold action and made the biggest admission in modern politics, which is that what we are doing needs to change. That, in and of itself, is a significant step, and it is a step that the cabinet secretary has taken today.
I welcome these measures. There is a context to this situation; as Yi-pei Chou Turvey said, it did not happen overnight. The prison population is changing as society changes. Let us remember that the level of recorded crime is down 49 per cent from 1991. We are living in a safer, happier and more contented society; it just sometimes does not feel like that.
Alyn Smith started his speech by talking about an admission—we did not quite hear that, but I take his point. He made a comment that we have a safer society, but violent crime is up and sexual crime is at its highest since 1971. For many people, it is not a safer society. Does he not accept that the focus of our attention should be on violent crimes, sexual crimes and organised crimes, which are on the rise?
Overall, recorded crime is down by 41 per cent on 1991. I said that it sometimes does not feel like it—the member can read the Official Report. The rest of my speech will be of great interest to my colleague, I dare say.
The length of custodial sentences in Scotland is up by 37 per cent since 2015, so there is a change in sentencing as organised crime in particular is having an effect on those numbers. However, there is an issue in the prison population that we need to deal with right now. As colleagues have said, prisons deal with the end of the process and the end of the chain, but I am drawn to much more aggressive upstream measures to reduce offending in the round and reduce the number of people who end up in the court service. There are too many people in prisons who are on remand, which is one of the most significant changes that could be made quickly in the prison population. I warmly welcome the greater use of GPS and a greater focus on home detention curfew, which is a productive area for us to look at, because it will effect change in the prison population quickly.
We also have to admit that we have too many people in prison. Even if we reduce the population to capacity, we will still have one of the highest prison populations of any western European country. Too many people are in jail when, surely, we need to be looking at rehabilitation and reducing reoffending, as well as stopping offences in the first place.
I am interested in the point about upstream measures, and I am particularly interested in women, because we know that they should not always enter the criminal justice system and prisons in particular. Perhaps there is more that the cabinet secretary could do in that area, because there is a lot of research on it.
I strongly agree with the member’s point and thank her for it. We need to look at the issue in a much wider context than just that of reducing the prison population. We need to look at why the prison population is as high as it is and at why people are ending up in prison, because we could be taking other measures to help people, particularly women, to not get into that circumstance at all.
I commend to the cabinet secretary the idea that we need a strategy for the older prison population. I think that we could take a different approach in that area. A number of older people have been convicted of terrible crimes, but their risk to the general population is much lower than it used to be because of their age and circumstances. That was not in the cabinet secretary’s speech, but I suggest that it would be useful for us to look into that issue.
The wider picture has to be looked at. It is not just about the prison population. Prisons are at the end of the story and they are dealing with the symptoms of society’s failure. I am not interested in pointing fingers at any particular party; we all need to look at this, and early interventions have to be the focus. I am very drawn to the Lib Dems’ amendment, which I think is constructive and has many good ideas. I certainly hope that the Government will be in favour of it.
For a number of years, I was a director of Turning Point Scotland, which is Scotland’s biggest social welfare charity, although I am not any more. Fifteen years ago, we commenced an initiative called housing first, which is primarily a way of dealing with homelessness. It is also about dealing with people who are in and out of the justice system in one form or another. It gives people secure accommodation with, essentially, assisted or supported living and mentoring. The reduction in reoffending rates was spectacular. That approach also deals with addiction and substance misuse and ensures that homelessness is not a problem. There are things that we can do and things that Scotland is very good at.
What you say about Turning Point sounds very interesting. I do not understand why that interesting idea was not put in place for 19 years under the SNP Government. [Interruption.] Oh, it was—sorry.
The chamber has been designed so that members speak through the chair, which also means that the microphones will work. If you face me, your microphone should work.
I am grateful to Amanda Bland for her comment. She is a good colleague on the Criminal Justice Committee, and, as ever, that was a sensible question. Turning Point Scotland is a charity. It is independent of Government and that was not a Government initiative. However, it happened 15 years ago under an SNP Administration with SNP support, and it is an example of what we could be doing if we looked at the bigger picture.
We are in danger of missing a trick, colleagues, if we just look at the prison population itself, because there is a wider agenda that we need to take good note of. I welcome the fact that we are taking steps to reduce the prison population, but there needs to be a wider discussion—I think that we are all agreed on that.
Community justice must be expanded. On community payback orders and reoffending, the statistics are clear that 42 per cent of those who have had a custodial sentence reoffend within a year, whereas 28.6 per cent of those who have had a community payback order reoffend. Alternatives to custody deliver better reoffending rates. That percentage is still too high, but it is still something for us to look at.
I welcome today’s debate, and I welcome the measures—I look forward to participating on them with the Criminal Justice Committee. There is an issue to be dealt with now, and it is good that we are taking steps towards that, but we need to have a wider discussion. I was very drawn to Maggie Chapman’s contribution on examples from other countries. Norway, the Netherlands and Estonia have taken dramatic steps to not just reduce their prison populations but look at the wider picture, and the Criminal Justice Committee will certainly look at those examples in very detailed ways.
15:26
Last night, when I was looking at the amendments, I thought, “We all pretty much want the same thing.” On hearing the contributions today, I am even more convinced that there is much more that unites us than divides us on this topic.
We all want fewer crimes to be committed. We all want our communities to be safe. We want victims and survivors to be respected, protected and heard. We want fewer people in prison because fewer crimes are committed, fewer people are held on remand and fewer people reoffend. We want more people to get community sentences. We want less-crowded prisons that are safer for inmates and prison officers and that create space for successful rehabilitation. We want less money to be spent on incarceration so that we can spend more money on things such as prevention and rehabilitation.
To that end, I hope that colleagues from across the chamber welcome the £1 billion from the Scottish Government that will be invested in Scottish prisons this year, as well as the very positive proposals that the Cabinet Secretary for Justice has set out.
Will Kate Campbell give way?
I will make progress.
Although money for, investment in and a focus on those priorities are very welcome, we need to be realistic about what is driving crime and offending—and the evidence exists. In the 2024 Scottish prison survey, 42 per cent of respondents stated that
“a Social Worker was involved in their lives while they were growing up”.
Forty-two per cent—that is a massive overrepresentation compared with the general population.
In 2018, the Scottish Government published a paper on childhood trauma links to adult criminal behaviour, and the publication noted that 45 per cent of the
“Adult prisoner survey respondents reported that they had been physically abused in their home as a child”.
Forty-five per cent—again, that is a massive overrepresentation compared with the general population.
Scottish Prison Service statistics show that individuals from
“the 10% most deprived areas … accounted for 31% of all arrivals to prison in 2022-23”.
That is a massive, disproportionate overrepresentation. We know that people who end up in prison are much more likely to have faced disadvantage, trauma and poverty. If we tackle inequality, we are literally tackling one of the main root causes of crime.
What is so sad is that, often, the circumstance of one family member being in prison perpetuates disadvantage for other members of that family. Families Outside estimates that, each year in Scotland, more than 27,000 children and young people experience a parent’s imprisonment. Having a family member in prison creates, sustains and entrenches poverty for the families who are left behind.
Kate Campbell made a point a moment ago about poverty. Does she agree that the last thing that we should be doing in this Parliament is agreeing to budgets that involve cuts to the college sector, putting higher education into financial difficulty or threatening the number of apprenticeships? We should be growing all those sectors, because they are the golden tickets that take people out of poverty and prevent the social outcomes that she is describing. Does she agree?
There are many things that we need to do to tackle poverty and inequality. If Stephen Kerr agrees that poverty is an underlying factor, I hope that he will agree that, for example, the Scottish child payment is transformational. If he listens to the rest of my speech, he will hear about that.
On average, families of people in custody spend £180 a month on supporting that person. Only yesterday, we found out that one in five families are left with just £12 a week after outgoings—those are the families living with the highest levels of poverty. Those families are disproportionately more likely to be impacted by incarceration and are also more likely to be unable to afford to visit and support incarcerated family members. We have to break that cycle.
Prison still very much has a place. We need our communities to be safe. However, when prison is not necessary, and when a community sentence or home detention can be used instead, the benefits are huge. It keeps families together, keeps people rooted in their communities and makes it much less likely that the person will reoffend—because, at the end of their sentence, they are not ejected back into society without a life to return to. I am glad that, this year, the Scottish Government is investing £169 million in community justice. That is how we break the cycle.
A huge part has to be about how we prevent young people from getting caught up in the criminal justice system. That includes using peer mentoring projects, such as the turn your life around project, to help young people who may not have the role models that they need in their lives; restorative justice, which empowers victims and survivors while helping offenders to understand the impact of their crimes on other people; or trauma-informed community custody units such as the Bella centre and the Lilias centre, where women on low supervision can rebuild their lives.
We also need to take a whole-life, whole-society approach. When we consider investment in social justice, the Scottish child payment, social housing, mental health services, youth work, keeping the Promise and any other measure that reduces inequality and makes our society fairer, we must also consider that to be tackling the root causes of crime, bringing down our prison population and making our communities safer. Those are the outcomes that we all want to achieve—I hope that we can agree on that.
15:32
There is no doubt that Scotland’s prisons are under immense pressure. Once again, our prison population has reached a record level and, as we have heard, it is circa 800 over capacity and heading upwards. That should concern us because of the impact on prison staff, who are working under increasingly difficult circumstances, and because of the impact on prisoners, many of whom are not getting the support and rehabilitation that they need. Most of all, it should concern us because of what it says about the ability of our justice system to deliver effectively for the people of Scotland and to keep them safe.
Public confidence in our justice system matters, yet the evidence suggests that confidence remains stubbornly low. Many Scots do not believe that the sentence fits the crime or that cases are dealt with quickly enough and, despite years of reform and investment, public attitudes towards the justice system have changed little in the past decade. Three quarters of Scots say that they know only a little or nothing about how our criminal justice system operates, and only about a third believe that the system delivers sentences that fit the crime. At the same time, people can see that our prisons are overcrowded. They see the headlines about emergency measures and early release schemes—they see a system that appears to be under strain. If the public are not confident that those who should be in prison are in prison and are serving the sentences handed down by the courts, it becomes much harder to build confidence in the wider justice system.
That matters because public confidence is essential if we are to secure support for the changes that many experts believe are necessary and which most of us here agree should be made. As others have said, community justice has an important role to play. It is often far more effective in reducing reoffending and, in many cases, it delivers better outcomes than short-term imprisonment. In conversations that I have had with local police, they have referred to something that my colleague Pauline McNeill spoke about: a revolving door of people going to prison, getting out and reoffending. We have to break that cycle.
However, those arguments will carry weight only if the public have confidence that alternatives to custody are robust, effective and properly enforced and funded. I welcome the fact that the Government’s motion recognises the complexity of the changes and makes a commitment to community justice. However, as Scottish Labour’s amendment makes clear, we need greater urgency; we need a clearer understanding of why existing efforts to reduce reoffending and support rehabilitation are not delivering; and we need to look at how we can make progress.
We need a credible plan to address overcrowding in a way that protects public safety and restores confidence in the system. It is clear from the debate that the status quo is not working. For too long, confidence in our justice system has remained stagnant, while pressures in our prisons have continued to grow. The question is about not simply prisoner numbers but public safety, public confidence and public trust. If we are serious about strengthening Scotland’s justice system, the Government must do more, with greater urgency.
15:35
The first time that I was in Barlinnie, in 2008, as a case worker, I never imagined that, years on, I would be the local member of the Scottish Parliament, representing Barlinnie and overlooking justice policy. I have thoroughly enjoyed the first few weeks of Parliament, looking specifically at criminal justice and understanding better the context to how we have got to where we are.
In Scotland, we have roughly 177 prisoners per 100,000 of the population. Comparing that with our European neighbours—for example, the Netherlands, which has around 54 prisoners per 100,000—gives us an idea that the course that we have followed has not necessarily worked. What other countries such as the Netherlands and Finland have in common is that they took radical and bold action. That is exactly what the cabinet secretary is attempting to do.
Given that we are all policy makers, I hope that members have read the report of the Scottish sentencing and penal policy commission, which was published earlier this year, because many of the measures that the cabinet secretary has outlined are contained in that report. He is following the evidence and, as he does so, he deserves the support of the Parliament.
However, I raise challenges with the Scottish Government—particularly when it comes to remand, which other colleagues have raised. One in four prisoners in the prison system is on remand. Those prisoners have not been tried or convicted. The latest figures that I have seen suggest that 33 per cent of the population at HMP Barlinnie in Riddrie are on remand. As we pursue the measures that the cabinet secretary has outlined—I think that we should—my question for the Scottish Government is about having the wraparound support that will be required when people come out of the prison gate, which is my big concern.
From my experience early in the process of joining the Criminal Justice Committee, doing background reading and taking evidence from HM Inspectorate of Prisons in Scotland, it is clear that we need to set people up to succeed both when they are in the prison system and when they come out. That relates to things such as addiction support, health support and making sure that housing is in place. I hope that the cabinet secretary can count on his colleagues across Government to make sure that we mobilise every aspect of the state so that, when we come to the release measures, people do not come back into the system.
My final point is that, as a result of James Adams joining the Parliament today—I warmly welcome him and wish him every success for the five years that he is here—the majority of members are in this place for the first time. That gives us an opportunity to do things slightly differently, perhaps.
My plea to members is to follow the evidence, give the cabinet secretary our support as he tries to take things through and resist the temptation to do the shock-jock comments to the Daily Mail and the walking-and-talking videos outside the Parliament. We should follow the evidence and ensure that the policies that we implement mean that the prison population starts to fall, as it did in Finland and the Netherlands because they took bold and radical action, which is exactly what the Scottish Government proposes.
15:38
I draw attention to my entry in the register of members’ interests: I am a nurse in NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde.
As is outlined in the motion, we recognise the scale and complexity of the current prison population, and we recognise that the design and operational capacity of the estate have caused significant challenges. I welcome the contributions that we have heard so far, and I am sure that some of the themes that I speak about will be similar. That is good, because it demonstrates that, across parties, we are having similar thoughts about where the issue needs to go, which is always a good thing. However, I welcome the comments by my colleague David Linden about being bold in order to have the radical changes that we need.
The SNP Government is investing £1 billion in Scotland’s prisons in this financial year. Although that support is welcome in dealing with the overpopulation of our prisons, we understand that we must invest further in rehabilitation and in safer communities to ensure that the prison population remains stable. This SNP Scottish Government is also investing around £169 million in community justice services in this financial year. Evidence has shown that community-based sentencing is often more effective than short prison sentences in reducing reoffending and has a wider community benefit while also allowing a proportionate way of addressing the consequences of criminality.
During my years as a mental health nurse, I have cared for many individuals who have also been offenders. It is important to recognise that there is specific mental health legislation for Scotland—the Mental Health (Care and Treatment) (Scotland) Act 2003, as amended by the Mental Health (Scotland) Act 2015—to ensure that those who are deemed to be mentally unwell at the time of their criminality will receive specialist care and treatment in our forensic services. That is also not the end of the matter, because we know that many offenders within our prison population have experienced adverse childhood experiences such as neglect, abuse or addiction within the home or are care experienced. The lives that they have lived can have a cumulative impact, and repeat offending and a reliance on institutions can become the norm for some. Vulnerability, if not addressed, can have adverse outcomes for individuals and for all of us in society.
In my opinion, that is why the work that the Scottish Government is carrying out through the Promise is so important—because it directly supports children and families. We know that the Promise exists to transform how Scotland cares for its children, care-experienced adults and families. Although we cannot change the past for individuals who are already in the justice system, we must recognise that the appropriate trauma-based support, family interventions and nurturing relationships that the Promise seeks to provide were not available to many who have already offended.
We must also recognise that there are bad people who do bad things. For those who commit serious crimes and who pose the highest risk, prison sentences and remaining in prison in the most severe of circumstances can be the most appropriate action and outcome. However, for offenders where the risk can be reasonably assessed—on a case-by-case basis—as being low or reduced, allowing them to remain connected to support services within an appropriate community setting while remaining accountable for their actions can mitigate against reoffending and could be more beneficial for all in society.
Given what Michelle Campbell has said in the good speech that she is making, I hope she will agree that the concerns of victims must be at the heart of any of the programmes that she is describing. There is nothing more terrifying for someone who has been a victim of crime than to see the perpetrator back in the community as if nothing has changed, as far as the victim can see. Does she agree that victims must be at the heart and centre of our justice system?
The member is moving ahead. I will be addressing the issue of victims in my speech and will get to that point if he will allow me to go on.
To show that we are serious about creating safer communities and reducing reoffending, we must continue to invest in trauma-informed services both inside and outside our prisons. By providing adequate support—including mental health support, work to tackle addiction and help to rebuild lives—to those who are affected by childhood trauma, we can break cycles of both offending and reoffending that can often span generations.
Supporting victims must also be a priority, where appropriate, in serving the ends of justice. Restorative justice, which my fellow Campbell, Kate Campbell, already made a point about today, can be an opportunity for increased accountability of the offender while empowering victims and giving them the opportunity to have some closure or, at least, to move forward. Justice must be firm, fair and focused on prevention as well as on punishing those who deserve that.
The challenge of the rising prison population cannot be solved by incarceration alone. Continued investment in rehabilitation, the prison estate and community-based justice has a role to play in supporting society and in addressing the root causes of offending. That investment can support victims while seriously addressing the need to be ambitious about preventing reoffending and supporting offenders with traumatic backgrounds or adverse past experiences, so that they can access consistent and appropriate support.
15:45
Scotland’s prison population is at a critical point. As the motion demonstrates, the Scottish Government recognises the importance of the issue and is taking action through sustained investment, careful planning and a clear focus on public safety. The 2026-27 budget includes investment of £1 billion in Scotland’s prisons. That is a significant commitment to our justice system and it is an investment in capacity, safety, rehabilitation and the long-term effectiveness of our prison estate.
We all recognise that prison remains an essential part of our justice system. It is the appropriate place for those who have committed serious crimes against people and society and for those who present a risk to the public. The protection of victims and the safety of communities are central to the Scottish Government’s approach.
Scotland’s prison population continues to rise despite our having the lowest number of recorded crimes, and the average custodial sentence length increased by 37 per cent between 2014-15 and 2023-24. That is all having an impact on capacity in our prisons.
The Scottish Government is taking action to strengthen the justice system and support public confidence, and it is clear that public safety remains the highest priority. For example, changes to the early release scheme do not apply to those who serve long-term custodial sentences of more than four years or those who serve sentences for domestic abuse or offences of a sexual nature. The protection of victims clearly remains central to decision making.
In the remainder of my remarks, I will focus on the role of community justice as a sustainable response to the situation. Deputy Presiding Officer, you will know that I am interested in that, as you are. We were both members of the Criminal Justice Committee in the previous session of Parliament.
Evidence shows that community-based sentences are effective in reducing reoffending. They support accountability while helping people to address the causes of offending behaviour, and they contribute to having safer communities and fewer victims. That is why the Scottish Government is investing around £169 million in community justice services in 2026-27. Is that enough? Personally, I do not think that it is. It is a minuscule amount in the justice budget, which is very, very heavily weighted towards punishment.
The additional £10 million to support diversion from prosecution, alternatives to remand, community sentencing and throughcare services is welcome. It builds on the investment of £25 million over the previous two years. I also welcome the cabinet secretary’s remarks on reviewing community justice. However, the evidence is already clear. Statistics show that people who are released from custody experience higher rates of reconviction than those who receive non-custodial sentences. In the 2022-23 cohort, 42.5 per cent of those who were released from custody were reconvicted within a year. For those who were given a community payback order, the figure was 28.6 per cent. Those figures demonstrate the value of effective community interventions.
Community justice is not soft touch. It is fair, proportionate and trauma informed and it benefits all of society, not just the offender. The approach is balanced, evidence led and focused on long-term outcomes.
For those who should and must serve a custodial prison sentence, that sentence should provide an important opportunity to address offending and health inequalities and improve health outcomes. We must put the resources in to try to stop the cycle of the same people coming in and out of prison.
When I was first elected to this place, 10 years ago, I had been working as a criminal justice social worker. I came here thinking that Scotland was very much on a path towards a rehabilitative community justice model, like many of our European neighbours who have been mentioned in the debate. Sadly, however, we are not making quick enough progress in shifting that balance. I have to be blunt here. Until we stand up to the rhetoric of the political right in this chamber, we will always be spending billions on prisons and trying to outdo each other as to who is tougher on crime. That money could be spent on hospitals and other things for our communities.
Will the member take an intervention?
Will the member take an intervention?
I will take an intervention from Stephen Kerr.
I am really confused by Fulton MacGregor’s objection to the idea that we should invest in the prison estate. The reason why we are having this debate is that the prison estate has not kept up with demand. I intervened on the Cabinet Secretary for Justice to point out that ministers have failed to plan and to make decisions. Surely to goodness Fulton MacGregor is not expecting us to continue with the Victorian-style facilities that we have in our prisons. They are not conducive to the rehabilitation that we would all like to see prisoners experience before returning to society.
I thank Stephen Kerr for that intervention, but he knows fine well that that is not what I said. I welcome the investment in our prison estates. I meant that, of the money that is in the criminal justice system, the balance should be weighted more towards community justice. That is the view that I hold, and neither Stephen Kerr nor anyone else on the Tory benches will change my mind on it.
There is a better way. It will take strength, determination and a lot of work to achieve it, but the rewards will be great: a happier, more just society in which the cycle of offending is effectively interrupted and our jails and prisons are kept for the most violent, dangerous and serious offenders.
We now move to closing speeches. I call Yi-pee—sorry, Yi-pei—Chou Turvey to speak for up to four minutes.
15:50
Do not worry, Deputy Presiding Officer—Yi and pei are both pronounced like EE, the phone company, if that makes it easier to remember.
This week, I spoke with the family of a man who was released on licence to serve his sentence in the community. He has been tagged with an electronic device and must stay within the four walls of his house from 7 o’clock every evening until 6 o’clock the following morning. He cannot leave his local authority and can travel only for work and social purposes. He must serve 300 hours of community service and pay a £3,000 fine. He admitted guilt. He committed an act of violence and punishment is appropriate, but we agree with the Scottish Government that to assume prison is a panacea for all crime is to simplify the most complex of issues.
As my colleague from across the chamber emphasised today, the aim of our justice system is twofold: to punish and to rehabilitate.
In that instance, a prison sentence would surely have led to that man losing his home. Serving a custodial sentence would have meant that he was unable to work or pay his mortgage, and—as he is the primary carer for his children—it would have resulted in greater pressure on our children and family services, which would have come at a cost to our public purse and been to the detriment of the young people involved.
Home detention as part of a wider set of tools to manage a prison population does work, yet the number of prisoners on home detention curfew is lower now than it was 10 years ago. Between 2016 and 2018, an average of 288 prisoners were on home detention at any one time; during the same period ending in 2025, the average number was 87. We have tools at our disposal to manage the prison population and we need to use them.
The same is true about the size of our prisons. We are going in two very different directions. On one side, we are considering gigantic prisons while, on the other, we are considering smaller ones that are more community oriented. We need to consider what the research is telling us about which kind suits our society best and which is best for rehabilitation.
I call on the Scottish Government to do what Pauline McNeill described clearly and take the action that is needed to clear the backlog in the justice system. We need to reduce the number of people who are held on remand.
As several colleagues from across the chamber have stated, offending often sits hand in hand with complex issues that the offenders face. We call on the Scottish Government to pour money into programming that works to treat the underlying issues, including by providing addiction support, services to improve mental health, and support with housing and for the families of offenders, which Kate Campbell, Maggie Chapman and Michelle Campbell mentioned.
At the start of the debate, the cabinet secretary highlighted that community sentences need to be effective. I am reminded again of my discussion with the family of the man on licence in the community. They reported that there is a broken community payback system and that hours have been wasted by a poorly managed scheme.
For those reasons, the Scottish Liberal Democrats call on the Scottish Government to publish a long-term strategy for achieving a sustainable prison population that commands public confidence. Justice cannot be about one emergency after another. This problem is solvable and has not come as a surprise. I call on the Scottish Government to take the bold decisions needed to effect deliverable, actionable differences. It is what we were elected to do.
Delivery, action and getting things done are what the Scottish Liberal Democrats are committed to deliver in the Parliament. I call on the Government to work with us where our shared values align to create lasting benefits for the people of Scotland.
The current crisis in our prison system is the consequence of years of being on the bottom of the to-do list, of the backlogs of the justice system, the delay to the prison infrastructure, the high remand population and of missing the fact that there is predictable pressure on the prison estate. It is like that unloved but necessary drawer of doom in your home that you always do last and only find time to sort when you cannot close it any more. Let us agree to that and move forward with purpose.
15:55
Yi-pei Chou Turvey sums things up very well. This whole issue has been at the bottom of the to-do list—that is exactly where we are.
The title of the Government’s motion, which is the subject of today’s debate, is:
“Achieving a sustainable prison population”.
We can all share that perfectly reasonable objective.
It has certainly remained at the top of my to-do list. I would reflect on the fact that, after a month in post, I have presented to Parliament a plan to achieve a sustainable prison population.
With the greatest respect to the cabinet secretary, a more accurate portrayal of his speech is that he presented a consultation on some ideas that might address the issue.
I am not necessarily commenting on the few weeks that Neil Gray has been cabinet secretary. We approach any appointment of a new cabinet secretary with high hopes that there will be words, yes, but also action and delivered outcomes. Therefore, I publicly welcome Neil Gray to his position and wish him, on behalf of the people of Scotland and all of us in the chamber, success in achieving the changes that we all know are needed in our justice system, because Pauline McNeill is right: we are at a low point of public confidence in it.
Before we go any further in the debate about how to fix a problem, it is instructive to discuss how we got there in the first place. How did we get to the point at which there are 8,300 prisoners in a prison estate that is designed for 7,800? How did we get to the point at which we have the worst record for deaths in custody probably in the whole of Europe—the figure is certainly three or four times that in England and Wales? How did we get to the point where rehabilitation opportunities are so under pressure and so limited in accessibility?
Does the member recognise—most members across the chamber have agreed—that poverty is a significant driver of people ending up in the prison system and that his Conservative Government did so much damage to this country, particularly through the introduction of universal credit, which pushed thousands of families into poverty? Does he accept responsibility for his party’s impact on the increase in prisoner numbers?
The cabinet secretary has a challenge on his hands, because if that is an example of the kind of knockabout politics that members—[Interruption.]
Members.
Surely not, Deputy Presiding Officer. Here I am, trying to be a constructive participant in the debate, and what do I get? Members crying, “Tory, Tory, Tory.”
We can have such debates if members like, because I am quite adept at participating in them—as, I think, the cabinet secretary would agree—but I am trying to be constructive. We must take a problem and understand its roots before we can begin to challenge it.
Will the member give way?
I would never not give way to David Linden.
Mr Kerr will be aware that, in 2023, the then Conservative Government embarked on a process of early release. I am sure that he will also be aware of some of the work that was undertaken by his, and indeed our, former colleagues at Westminster, Ed Argar and David Gauke, who were ministers. I understand why Mr Kerr might want to look back, but will he reflect on the situation that those former ministers left behind, and will he come up with some solutions, as we are trying to do today?
I stood up to intervene on Alyn Smith in order to compliment him on his speech, which was an acknowledgement of the problems that we face. I think that, in his remarks, David Linden, too, has acknowledged the problems that we face.
All that I am looking for from the Scottish ministers is a degree of humility—for them to say, “Look, we’ve got this wrong and there’s another way to do it.” [Interruption.] For those who do not know, David Linden is holding up the report from the independent Scottish sentencing and penal policy commission. It is certainly worth reading and debating, but it is not an acknowledgment by those on the Government front bench, which is really all that I seek. It was a very small expectation on my part that they would admit that they got it wrong—that prisons were at the bottom of the to-do list. That would be a starting point for us all to work together from. However, that position has been taken—
Will the member take an intervention?
—in interventions such as Kate Campbell’s.
I will, of course, accept an intervention from the cabinet secretary.
I certainly do not regret, and nor will I apologise for, the fact that we are prosecuting more serious offences, including sexual offences and historical sexual offences. That has driven the increase in the long-term prison population and is a significant contributor to the current prison population.
I applaud that, but it is not an admission about where things have gone wrong. I am glad that the cabinet secretary agrees that we should be locking up those bad people. An SNP member said earlier in the debate that there are bad people who do bad things. That is exactly right. Let us be tough on criminality, particularly serious crime, violent crime, sexual crime and organised crime. Let us throw the book at the people in our society who are causing the misery that such individuals cause, but let us not run away from the realities.
Speaking of realities, I draw colleagues’ attention to a letter dated 12 September 2025 from His Majesty’s chief inspector of prisons, about the prison situation. It is one of the starkest letters that I have ever read from any of His Majesty’s inspectors. It is such a call to action that no one who reads the letter could turn their back on what it contains. Basically, the letter says that we are presiding over a prison system that is worse than that of a third-world country. How can that possibly bring about remediation and rehabilitation? One of the Green members talked about countries looking at our prisons and being reluctant to extradite prisoners to Scotland. That is unacceptable for me as a Scot and a Scottish Conservative, because I want us to have a rigorous justice system with victims at its heart.
The letter repeatedly says that none of this is unexpected. The state of our prison system is not a flash-weather moment but the result of prisons being at the bottom of the to-do list. Why do we not just accept that that is what has happened for the past couple of decades? With such a foundation of honesty about where we are at, perhaps we can do something about it.
I see that the Deputy Presiding Officer is inviting me to conclude, which I will happily do. I have not been able to deliver the speech that I prepared—there is nothing new about that—but I will say that ministers were warned.
I suggest that colleagues read the letter of 12 September 2025, because it is a reality check that we—all parties, and particularly the Government, where the responsibility rests—badly need.
I can assure Mr Kerr that he got extra time for the interventions that he took.
16:03
I am really grateful that we are having this discussion. Although we may all have slightly different approaches on exactly what needs to happen to address the problems with our current prison system—
Will the member take an intervention?
I will make some progress, but thank you.
We may have different approaches, but it seems clear from the debate that the prison system in Scotland is not working—that it is broken. As we have heard, we have one of the highest imprisonment rates in western Europe. We have also heard about how our prison system is failing to rehabilitate people and prevent reoffending. In fact, around 43 per cent of people released from custody in Scotland go on to reoffend. It is a problem that is further exacerbated by the huge issue of overcrowding, which, as the cabinet secretary mentioned, makes it difficult for prisons to engage everyone in activities that help with rehabilitation, such as exercise, education, employment and training.
We urgently need to rethink our approach. We need to move away from a costly and failing system that is focused on punishment and towards one that is focused on harm prevention and public safety, by investing in alternative, victim-focused, restorative and community justice systems for those who do not pose an immediate threat to society—many of which have been mentioned by colleagues. We also need to focus much more on prevention, including addressing the inequalities that mean people from some communities are far more likely to end up in prison than others.
I am grateful to Kate Nevens for giving way on that point. Fairly or unfairly, a view has been attributed to her about the future of prisons. Given the rightful claim that the cabinet secretary made about our ability to imprison bad people, hardened criminals, serious criminals, people who commit sexual crimes and people who are involved in organised crime, does she agree that there is a very important place for prisons within the justice system?
I thank Stephen Kerr for that question—it was not unexpected.
I want there to be a complete overhaul of the prison system, including radically reducing, over time, the number of people that we incarcerate.
Will the member take an intervention?
I am responding to an intervention.
We should be building a justice system that is focused on harm prevention, safety and accountability rather than on punishment. For me, that still means a system in which people who pose a violent threat to communities are removed for our safety, but that system can and should look very different from our current, broken prison system.
In too many cases, our prisons house people who are already experiencing vulnerabilities such as poverty and substance misuse. Janey Starling from Level Up, which is a feminist organisation that campaigns for an end to the imprisonment of pregnant women and mothers, has described prisons as
“just warehouses for people who have fallen through all of the holes in our welfare safety net.”
The evidence that we have proves her point. Sixty-three per cent of people in prison have an alcohol use disorder. Almost half of people arriving to prisons in 2024-25 were from the 20 per cent most deprived areas of Scotland. According to the Prison Reform Trust, 70 per cent of women prisoners in Scotland report that they have been a victim of domestic abuse or violence from their partner.
I thank Carol Mochan for bringing up women in prison. Women are also far more likely to be imprisoned for shoplifting than men. Vast inequalities are reflected in the system. If people go into prison vulnerable, they are likely to come out the other side with those vulnerabilities multiplied. UK-wide statistics suggest that, if someone goes into prison with a substance misuse problem, they are seven times more likely to experience an overdose when they come out. If someone goes into prison experiencing housing insecurity, they are far more likely to become homeless again on their release, and they are likely to have lost the community support networks that they had before entering prison. That is why the Greens have called for all prison leavers to go into housing first on discharge, with safe accommodation packaged together with appropriate support, making sure that everyone has access to—
Will the member take an intervention?
Yes.
I apologise for the timing, because Kate Nevens was right in her groove. I want to ask about employment. Does she agree that short sentences can interrupt employment and make a more destabilised environment for that individual? That is not good for society at large, either.
I absolutely agree. We need to do all that we can to help people to rebuild their lives through, for example, employability services, and make it much less likely that they will find themselves in the same position again.
We also need to send far fewer people to prison in the first place—we have heard a lot about that in the debate. We should expand presumptions against short sentencing and reduce the use of remand in custody, as Yi-pei Chou Turvey’s amendment makes clear. We should create a presumption against the imprisonment of pregnant women and women with young children, and expand those alternative, restorative and community options for non-violent crimes. In short, we should be using prisons as a last resort rather than a first response.
In the final report of the independent sentencing and penal policy commission, which the Scottish Government set up in 2025, the commission argued that short prison sentences
“are not effective at reducing reoffending and often destabilise lives by disrupting housing, employment, treatment and family ties”,
and that
“Community sentences offer a more effective route to rehabilitation”.
We have heard several members talk about the importance of community justice approaches in the debate.
As we have heard, prisons are expensive, costing more than £52,000 per person per year. If we reduced the prison population by 40 per cent, which the Netherlands has shown us is entirely possible, that would free up £180 million that could be transformative for victims and community safety.
We should properly invest in victim support programmes, rape crisis services and shelters that are providing vital support at a time of massive funding cuts. We should also invest in more prevention programmes that support marginalised communities for whom prison sentences are far more likely, such as care-experienced young people, communities that experience high levels of poverty and racialised groups.
We must also start to tackle the underlying social and economic inequalities that cause people to end up in prison. We must invest more not in prisons but in homes, schools, youth work, addiction services, hospitals and community health services as part of a transformative justice approach.
Where we stand on the issue depends on what we think the justice system exists to do. As the University of Strathclyde’s Professor Mike Nellis has said,
“there is a price to be paid for confusing pragmatic and justifiable responses in the here and now, because they are available, with the longer-term pursuit of a safer society.”
If we want a safer society, we need to start collectively reimagining what our justice system looks like and building new systems that centre victims and the prevention of harm.
16:11
I welcome the new member for North East Scotland to the chamber.
A couple of weeks ago, one of my first actions as a Reform MSP was to visit HMP Grampian, so I have a particular interest in the topic. I had a good chat with the governor when I was there. Had Maggie Chapman or Kate Nevens taken one of my earlier interventions, which they did not, I would have asked whether the Scottish Green Party still has a radical policy of abolishing prisons. I would welcome an intervention from the Greens who are in the chamber to clarify whether the answer to that is yes or no.
It seems that no Green member wishes to intervene—there we go.
When I was in HMP Grampian, I saw at first hand the intense daily pressures that our prison system faces: chronic overcrowding, serious staff shortages and the constant challenge of managing a revolving-door population. Scotland’s prisons are not sustainable, and that is the fault of the SNP Government. The latest reconviction statistics make that brutally clear. Nearly two thirds of current prisoners have had at least one prison sentence in the past 10 years. For those serving short sentences of three months or less, the reoffending rate is a shocking 60 per cent.
Criminals must serve their sentences in prison to break that cycle. There are far too many repeat offenders in prison. It has become a normalised process for them and not actual punishment. It has become part of their reality.
In a perfect world, we would all like to have fewer people in prison but, sadly, we do not live in a perfect world—we live in a country where victims are far too often forgotten. As we learned this week, sexual crimes in Scotland have hit record highs. They are up 10 per cent on the previous year, at 16,430 offences, which is the highest level since 1971. That is a national disgrace.
Reform says it clearly: victims must come first. Soft sentences for serious and repeat offenders are failing women and girls, and they must stop. Reform supports mandatory minimum sentences for the most serious criminals and tougher sentences for those who repeatedly prey on others. That is not about being punitive for its own sake but about delivering justice for victims and creating a real deterrent.
We must also be honest about rehabilitation. The current system is failing badly. Too many prisoners leave prison with no job, no stable housing and no meaningful support. Those failures help no one, least of all the victims.
We need a stronger stick and a genuine carrot. The stick means that sentences actually deter. The carrot means serious, properly funded rehabilitation, education, vocational skills and a throughcare service that gives people a real chance to break the cycle and find genuine, long-term employment that means that they can provide for themselves, their families and their loved ones.
Will the member give way?
I would love to.
Reform’s policies are about taking money out of the public sector, but Mr Simpson is now asking for more money to be spent on throughcare support. Where is that money coming from? I am genuinely interested to know.
I am sorry, but I do not think that I was calling for more money in the system; I was saying that there should be a readjusting of current budgets.
A sustainable prison population will be achieved only when we stop the revolving door of prison that we have. We need to put victims first, and we need to provide meaningful punishment along with effective rehabilitation. Unfortunately, over the past 19 years, the SNP Government has failed on the issue, and it must do better. Quite simply, victims deserve better, and the people of Scotland deserve better.
Reform members think that that was good—they are clapping.
Can we have quiet for the next speaker, please?
16:15
I congratulate James Adams on his spirited first speech.
I acknowledge the candour that the Cabinet Secretary for Justice brought to the chamber in his remarks earlier, and I acknowledge the substance of the Government’s motion, which I believe sets out in stark terms the nature of the challenge that is before the country.
Stephen Kerr referred to the letter that was sent by HM chief inspector of prisons. I think that that is a good starting point for us. She said:
“Overcrowding is an invidious and all-pervading evil that affects every aspect of prison life”
and that it makes it
“more difficult for the prison to comply with core human rights such as access to fresh air.”
She said that, because of overcrowding,
“Relationships between staff and prisoners can become more strained … Rehabilitation focused activity becomes more compromised”
and
“Transformational change opportunities are neglected, leaving more risk around the ability of prisoners to reintegrate successfully on release and stay away from crime”.
She pointed out that “such failures cost money”, and said that overcrowding means that
“Prisons stop being places of rehabilitation and become warehouses, holding people who may get very little time out of cell.”
That is the stark reality of the invidious and all-pervading evil in our prison systems. It is an evil that we cannot ignore.
I say to the Scottish Government that that evil is not new. It is unquestionably the case that the increase in convictions for serious violent and sexual offences is contributing to the growth in the prison population, but policy makers have been grappling with the size of Scotland’s prison population throughout the history of devolution. This is not year zero.
In his foreword to the document setting out the Government’s public service reform strategy, the then Minister for Public Finance acknowledged that the vision of the Christie commission on the shift towards prevention had
“not been realised to its full potential.”
The Christie commission identified Scotland’s prison population, which at that time had been growing year on year, as a prime example of failure demand. Although it is true that there was a period after the Christie commission’s report when the prison population fell, it is now back at record levels. I contend that that is because we have not sufficiently addressed the underlying factors driving demand in the system. I believe that the Cabinet Secretary for Justice accepted that point in his remarks earlier.
There are criminals who belong in prison—let us be clear about that—but, to build safer communities and make the system more sustainable, more action is needed on remand and more action is needed to break the cycle of reoffending. Repeat offending retraumatises victims, undermines community confidence in the justice system and costs us all. The Scottish Government estimates the total cost of reoffending to the Scottish economy to be somewhere between £3 billion and £4 billion.
As Pauline McNeill set out, we simply have not done enough as a nation to strengthen our approach to rehabilitation and community justice and to break that cycle of reoffending. As the chief inspector of prisons has said, the size of the prison population is a barrier to effective rehabilitation. As Katherine Sangster said, we have to build alternatives that can command the confidence of the public and the confidence of the judiciary. Therefore, our message to the Scottish Government is that Scottish Labour is prepared to work across party lines to reduce reoffending and to improve outcomes. On that note, I welcome the Cabinet Secretary for Justice’s announcement of a consultation and his remarks on GPS tracking in relation to bail and home detention curfews. I hope that, in that spirit, he might be able to agree with Labour’s amendment today.
I acknowledge Fulton MacGregor’s insightful contribution on community justice. It is not a soft-touch approach. If it is proportionate and well resourced, it is an important part of our justice system.
On that point, I declare an interest as a local councillor, because I want to highlight Scotland’s first alcohol and drug problem-solving court in South Lanarkshire and its promising approach to structured deferred sentencing. That involves a collaboration between Hamilton sheriff court and South Lanarkshire Council that we can build on, especially if the Scottish Government were minded to confirm its continued support for the project going forward.
This time, things have to be different. On the dashboard of indicators in front of us that tell us that something is going wrong with our public services, the one for our prison population has been flashing red for far too long.
The theme of avoidable, preventable failure demand is a common one across our public services, whether we are debating delayed discharge, the housing emergency or the stubborn gap in healthy life expectancies. There has been a chronic implementation gap—a mismatch between the ambitions of Government and the outcomes that we achieve. That is not just my view; it is the view of Audit Scotland. The Government signals progressive intent, secures a mandate for progressive change, but fails to deliver the progressive outcomes that can transform this country. That is what has to change, and that is why this Parliament has to be different from the last.
16:20
The sustained level of overcrowding in our prisons is posing an unacceptable level of risk and impacts on the ability to deliver rehabilitative work. I very much welcome that speech from Joe Fagan. Our prison population today stands at 8,459, against a design capacity of 7,800, which speaks to the challenge that we are facing. That increases the risk of reoffending and creates a vicious circle in which the impact is felt across the criminal justice system as a whole. Again, I thank the dedicated front-line staff for their hard work. I hope that that is the level of humility that Stephen Kerr has been looking for from me. I am saying that there is a challenge, I am pointing to the challenge and I will point out the steps that I want to take to address it.
I outlined the range of actions that the Government has taken with partners already and I assure Parliament that I will continue to engage regularly with justice partners and members to progress any action that helps to alleviate the pressure faced by the system.
I was really pleased with—and pleasantly surprised by—the debate today: there has been a recognition of the scale of the challenge that we face. I am keen that we learn lessons from countries that have had successes in reducing their prison population. I do not ask whether we can spend millions on exporting prisoners from Scotland to Estonia; I ask how Estonia has achieved a two-thirds reduction in its prison population over the past 20 years, and what steps it has taken to achieve 50 per cent capacity in its new jails.
I have listened carefully to the speeches this afternoon. As I said, I found the debate incredibly constructive. Kate Campbell summed it up incredibly well when she said that we are looking for the same thing—fewer crimes, fewer victims, fewer people in prison, less crowded prisons and less money spent on incarceration. There was a significant reflection on the problem and a refreshing willingness to engage in the proposals that I have set out.
I will now turn to some of the other contributions. I very much appreciated Pauline McNeill’s clarity on the challenges that we face. In the opening stages of the debate, she raised a point about public perception and the transparency of sentences. I understand that issue, and it is part of what we need to consult on. She will be aware that the system in England and Wales is moving to a sentencing model of three parts, in which a third of the sentence is spent in custody, a third of it involves monitoring and a third is spent at liberty. That puts into context the situation that we are looking to set out in the consultation that I have discussed. I also absolutely accept her point and the point raised by Stephen Kerr about deaths in custody. That is something that I will be engaging with. I will take that away, and we will discuss it further.
I absolutely recognise what Amanda Bland was saying about the escalation of the prosecution of serious sexual and organised crime. She will know from her background that that provides significant additional complexity for our prison system to manage, not least in the segregation of organised criminal gangs. With the prison population at its current level, that is incredibly challenging. She spoke about capacity, but we cannot just build our way out of this situation. We need to take steps around capacity, but I am also proposing consideration of how we reduce the population.
Maggie Chapman was absolutely right to set out that crime is not out of control. Indeed, she and Fulton MacGregor pointed to the fact that recorded crime rates are on a downward trend. Howevr, incarceration is up and is higher than the European average. That speaks to the challenge that we must grapple with as well as contradicting another point that has been made today, which is that the system prioritises criminals over victims. We are incarcerating more people per head of population than most of the countries in western Europe. We have seen an increase of more than 600 in the number of long-term prisoners over the past two years, and we have seen an increase of 37 per cent in the average length of sentences.
I disagree with those who say that we do not need any additional capacity. To be frank, I believe that we do. Maggie Chapman is right to point to the Netherlands, Estonia and other international examples and to how they have moved forward.
I welcome James Adams to the chamber. I congratulate him on arriving in the Scottish Parliament and I offer, through him, my congratulations to Douglas Lumsden on his success. James Adams hails from Fraserburgh and my father is a Torry loon and has links to Aberdeenshire, so I was heartened to hear about James Adams’s family heritage and what drives him in politics. I am sure that, based on his opening speech today, he will make a significant contribution to the Parliament.
Fulton MacGregor made an important point in his speech. I looked back at the Community Justice (Scotland) Act 2016 that changed how we deal with long-term prisoners, which is covered in the consultation. Fulton MacGregor said—and I agree with this—is that, in the debate on that legislation, there was a bit of a competition about who would be toughest in relation to the justice system. That is a difficult issue for politicians, and it is a big challenge for the Government.
One way in which the Government could demonstrate its commitment to balancing the realities in the political scenario around justice issues is by putting serious investment into alternatives. I know that the cabinet secretary has made an announcement in that regard, but it seems quite small. I think that all parties would like to see a bigger investment.
I hear that and I understand it. I heard very clearly the point that was made by my friend and colleague Fulton MacGregor about the comparative investment between community justice and custodial sentences. I understand that. We have increased the budget for community justice to £170 million a year, and it is almost an inevitability that, if we are expanding the use of community justice, we will need to fund the support that goes alongside that. That support needs to be iterative and considered. I believe that, if we are successful in the approach that I am setting out—a more preventive approach—it will become what Pauline McNeill is looking for.
I very much welcome Yi-pei Chou Turvey’s approach and the Liberal Democrat amendment, which we will support. I absolutely want to move to a more preventative approach. I have set out in my response to Pauline McNeill where we want to go and that we want the system to be more proactive than reactive.
Alyn Smith was very kind in his contribution. I thought it was a very complimentary and very thoughtful speech from the new convener of the Criminal Justice Committee. I welcome him to that role and congratulate him on his election. He remarked that recorded crime has come down since 1991. Much of the increase in the recording of sexual and violent crime—there was an exchange between Alyn Smith and Stephen Kerr on that point—is due to a significant shift in prosecution. That is a legacy of the previous Lord Advocate and previous justice secretaries, which has generated an increased confidence in reporting, which is absolutely fundamental.
Carol Mochan’s intervention on Alyn Smith about women in custody was also very important. During my visit to HMP Stirling, which the previous justice secretary invited me on when I was the Cabinet Secretary for Health and Social Care, I saw very clearly that many of the women in the justice system are victims themselves, so we have a big job of work to do in that space. Alyn Smith also made good points about older people in jail and moving upstream into prevention.
I recognise the point that Katherine Sangster made about the perception of whether sentences fit the crimes. However, I again point to the increase in the long-term prisoner cohort, which is up by 600 people in the past two years, while the average sentence length has increased by 37 per cent.
Similarly, David Linden was very thoughtful in his speech and he put the scale of our levels of incarceration into context. He also referenced the genesis of what I have set out today, which is the independent sentencing and penal policy commission. Its membership was comprised of a range of independent expert professionals: Martyn Evans, the former chair of the Scottish Police Authority; Catherine Dyer, chair of Community Justice Scotland; Cathy Jamieson, who is well known in this parish; Sheriff David Mackie; Dr Hannah Graham, the senior lecturer in criminology at the University of Stirling; and Lynsey Smith, the joint chair of the Social Work Scotland justice standing committee. I commend them for their work and I thank David Linden for raising the fact that their work is the genesis of what I am presenting today.
We need the whole Government and the whole of the public, community and voluntary sectors to move towards prevention. In my former life as the Cabinet Secretary for Health and Social Care, I often pointed to the fact that 80 per cent of the drivers of poor health are outside the control of the health service. I do not have a similar statistic to quote for the justice system, but the figure will be very similar. My portfolio and victims across society will be the greatest beneficiaries if we can move to a more preventative system, which is exactly what I am seeking to corral with colleagues in the Government; that is absolutely the focus of this Government.
Michelle Campbell referred to the £169 million that has been invested in community justice, her experience working in the health service, the drivers of mental illness, the link between mental illness and the justice system and the impact that we wish to see from the Promise. She was also right to emphasise that we must have prisons to deal with the most serious and dangerous offenders.
Fulton MacGregor has significant professional experience, as well as experience that has been gained through membership of the Criminal Justice Committee, and his speech was informed by that experience. He commented on the issue of investing in community versus custodial sentences. I readily understand that point and will, no doubt, engage with Mr MacGregor on it.
Mr Simpson suggested in his speech that this Government has somehow been soft on crime. On the basis of what I have set out, I cannot understand what planet that comment comes from. We have the highest levels of custody per head in western Europe, the long-term sentence population has increased by 600 in the past two years—that is equivalent to the size of Kilmarnock prison—and there has been a 37 per cent increase in the average length of sentences in the past decade.
One of the greatest drivers of the increase in the prison population has been the increased population of people who have been sentenced for sexual and violent crimes. I make no apology for that; I am pleased to see serious sentences for serious crimes. In the face of those facts, it is simply not credible to suggest that our justice system is anything other than robust in dealing with serious criminality.
I am determined to deliver a sustainable approach to the management of Scotland’s prison population and a prison estate that is safe and fit for purpose, with prevention at its heart and a clear focus on reducing offending and reoffending behaviour. That is how we serve justice and create a safer community. I therefore ask members to support us in consulting to bring about change in order to deliver a sustainable prison population, safer communities and a strong justice system.
That concludes the debate on achieving a sustainable prison population. I will allow a few moments for members on the front benches to swap over before we move to the next item of business,.