Criminal Justice Committee

Meeting date: Wednesday, September 15, 2021

Official Report 675KB pdf

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Prisons and Prison Policy

Our next agenda item is a round-table discussion about prisons and prison policy. I refer members to papers 3 and 4. We will take evidence today from a round table of witnesses, who will be joining us virtually. I am sorry that you cannot join us in person, which is due to the current rules on social distancing.

I welcome our panel of witnesses. Alan Staff is the chief executive of Apex Scotland; Mr Bruce Adamson is the Children and Young People’s Commissioner Scotland; Wendy Sinclair-Gieben is Her Majesty’s chief inspector of prisons for Scotland; Dr Katrina Morrison is committee secretary of the Howard League Scotland; John Watt is the chair of the Parole Board for Scotland; Mr Phil Fairlie is the assistant general secretary of the Prison Officers Association Scotland; Professor Fergus McNeill is a professor of criminology and social work at the University of Glasgow’s Scottish centre for crime and justice research; Ms Teresa Medhurst is the interim chief executive of the Scottish Prison Service; and Allister Purdie is the Prison Service’s interim director of operations. We very much appreciate your taking the time to join us this morning. I thank witnesses who have provided written submissions, which are now available online.

I intend to allow around an hour and 15 minutes for questions and discussion. I ask members to indicate to which witness they are directing their remarks. We can then open the floor to other witnesses for their comments. If other witnesses wish to respond, I ask them to indicate that by typing R in the chat function in BlueJeans. I will bring you in, if time permits. If you agree with what another witness is saying, there is no need for you to intervene. Other comments that you make in the chat function will not be visible to committee members or recorded anywhere, so if you want to make a comment, please do so by requesting to speak.

We will move directly to questions. I ask members and our invited guests to keep their questions and comments as succinct as possible. I am keen to encourage a free-flowing discussion.

I start by inviting Ms Pauline McNeill to ask some questions. I will then bring in Rona Mackay.

Good morning, everyone. My question concerns the conditions in which prisoners on remand and other prisoners are held in our prison estate. I am sure that I do not need to say it, but—for the record—we have among the highest numbers in Europe of prisoners on remand. Prisoners are on remand for an average of 18 months. Notwithstanding the pandemic, the figures are alarming.

I am interested to hear answers from quite a few members of the panel. Wendy Sinclair-Gieben, Dr Katrina Morrison from the Howard League, Phil Fairlie and Teresa Medhurst might like to answer the question. Is it time to consider specific rights, in particular for remand prisoners, but also for the prison population generally, in relation to being out of cells for a certain amount of time in a day? I am certainly keen that all prisoners have the right to fresh air. I realise that there are capacity issues and estate issues.

I record my admiration for the work that is done by prison officers and others who are involved in running our prison estate. The papers that have been provided dig deep into the intricacies of having a rising and ageing population, and all the other things. I am very conscious of that.

I am interested in moving forward and looking to the future to where we would ideally like to be. Is it time to have specific enforceable rights—even a charter of rights for prisoners—such that they would be allowed out of their cells once a day for a prescribed amount of time to get fresh air?

I suggest that we start with Wendy Sinclair-Gieben, who is the chief inspector of prisons.

Good morning. I would be delighted to answer that question, actually. The issue of remand prisoners has exercised me for a long time. First, there are some fundamental principles that need to be explored, one of which is that there are human rights that apply to all prisoners, regardless of whether they are on remand or convicted. A charter of rights already exists, and we should be following those guidelines, because we signed up to OPCAT—the Operational Protocol to the Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment.

The second thing is that there is a real need to review the prison rules that inhibit some of the things that would make a difference for remand prisoners.

The third thing, for me, is that we need recognition of the fact that when somebody is remanded in custody they have already tangled with the police and entered the criminal justice system, so we need to tackle the criminogenic reasons behind that, even if the reasons are poverty, debt and so on.

I see no reason for remand prisoners not to be afforded the existing privileges. Furthermore, remand prisoners should be able to access everything except the activities that relate specifically to convicted offenders.

Thank you for the question. We believe strongly that it is not good enough that, first of all, we have so many people on remand and, secondly, that their regime is so reduced and restricted, especially in light of the fact that 57 per cent of them do not receive custodial sentences, either because they are found to be not guilty or because they receive community sentences.

The time for which remand prisoners are in custody must be spent well, because the stigma for them and, potentially, their families is the same as that for sentenced prisoners. Therefore, we support any proposals to give them the same opportunities for work and access to programmes as the rest of the prison population.

Good morning, and thanks for the question, Pauline. You touched on the answer yourself. The issue for us is capacity and having the resources and time to give to the untried prison population. We will probably get into some of the reasons why capacity is tied up as it is in the prison system; I am sure that overcrowding will come up.

Overcrowding is partly because of the number of untried people in the system; there are too many untried people sitting in our prisons and we simply are not able to do with them all what we would want to do. There is no pride or satisfaction felt by prison staff about that. By and large, they are doing no more than warehousing some of the population behind doors for long periods of time. By doing that, staff are not delivering anything meaningful, other than keeping somebody out of the community.

If we are serious about tackling the problem, we must acknowledge that it is an issue of capacity and resource. It is often the elephant in the room in the discussions that we have about prisons, but if we are genuinely serious about tackling it, we will need to rethink what we mean by resourcing it.

Lastly, I ask Teresa Medhurst to answer that question.

Good morning. Thank you for the question. I agree with several of the points that have been made. Prison rules are one area in which there is a requirement to refresh and to better reflect a more modern prison system. The amount of time that prisoners spend out of their cells and getting fresh air is enshrined in prison rules. That time was limited during the early part of the pandemic, but it has been consistently in place since then for everyone—not just those on remand.

Finally, on service provision, the fact is that, as was pointed out earlier, people who come into custody on remand have the same disconnect from their families and communities as people on short-term sentences. Although services and support are available in prisons for prisoners on remand, provision is variable, so we need more consistency in that respect. That will, as Phil Fairlie rightly pointed out, give rise to resource and capacity issues, but with a real focus on improving our digital capacity and capability we could do a lot more as a service to ensure consistent provision, regardless of whether a prisoner is on remand or serving a sentence.

I think that Mr Adamson is also quite keen to say a few words on the subject.

I am, convener, and I thank Ms McNeill for her question.

It is important to remember that a number of children are on remand in the adult system, so I strongly associate myself with the comments of the office of Her Majesty’s Inspectorate of Prisons in Scotland that a human rights framework is already in place, particularly in relation to children, who are, through the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child, entitled to additional rights. Scotland’s track record on remanding children in young offenders institutions is really concerning—indeed, it is much more concerning than the situation in the adult population. I believe that the figure is 26 per cent in the adult population, while the average for children and young people is 80 per cent to 85 per cent. The figure fluctuates, but the fact is that a much higher percentage of children in YOIs—indeed, the vast majority—are there on remand. That is a significant concern, because they have to spend a lot more time in cells than those who have been sentenced, and they experience the least support and activities. We need to address that situation, primarily by getting those children out of detention.

It is also important that we look at the bail and remand and early-release provisions, particularly in relation to the Covid regulations. After all, no child under 18 should be remanded or sentenced to custody, and there should be a presumption of alternatives to custody. I am concerned that since the onset of the pandemic there has been no proper assessment of whether the children in Polmont pose any risks, or of why they cannot be managed in the community. They should have been included in the early-release scheme, but that did not happen, contrary to all the human rights advice from not only the United Nations Committee on the Rights of the Child, but the Council of Europe’s statement on principles in relation to the pandemic and emergency measures.

Children are disproportionately affected—remember that by “children” I mean everyone up to the age of 18. We need to take urgent action to get all children out of young offenders institutions, particularly in the context of Covid, and into more appropriate means of support.

Can you confirm that you referred to a figure of 80 per cent to 85 per cent?

Yes. The figure is around 88 per cent at the moment, but from the figures that we get from the daily population data, we see that it has been fluctuating. The figure was previously about two thirds, but since Covid, it has gone up and has been fluctuating between 76 per cent and, in April, 94 per cent. We are talking about relatively low numbers; the figure fluctuates, but it is about 120 individuals over the year and 20 at any given time.

I appreciate that that plays into the statistics, but the underlying point is that the majority of children—again, everyone up to age 18—whom we put into the adult prison system are on remand. That is hugely concerning and is a really urgent issue on which we need to focus. We also need to talk about why children are in prison in the first place when they should not be, but we need to look at remand children in particular.

I believe that Alan Staff would like to respond, too.

10:30  

I want to amplify a comment that Teresa Medhurst made. A person in any kind of custodial sentence suffers significant disruption to their life, particularly with regard to employment continuity, relationships, accommodation and so on. There is no distinction between a person on remand and a person who has been sentenced, except that a number of services are available to assist people after they have served a sentence, but those services in general do not cater for people coming out of remand. Even though the problems that both groups face are in many ways identical, those who come out of remand might be more disadvantaged. We should not take our eyes off what is a significant problem.

I will keep the flow of questioning going by bringing in Mr Findlay and then Ms Mackay.

My question is for Bruce Adamson, who has already touched on the issue of young people being remanded in prison and the initial cycle of violence defining them and setting off the whole chain of continual offending. When we visited the Lord President of the Court of Session a couple of weeks ago, he told us that we would look back and regard how we have treated young people as “barbaric”—that was the word he used.

I note that this morning brings news reports that the Scottish Sentencing Council is calling for the courts to make rehabilitation rather than punishment the primary consideration. The judiciary seems to be on the same page on the matter. Have we turned a corner, or is this just more of the same from a Scottish Government quango?

I very much welcome today’s announcement from the Scottish Sentencing Council. The starting point must always be that we see children as children in the first instance, and our approach must be rights based. We have been making progress in Scotland, but not with the level of urgency that is required as far as the rights of children and young people are concerned.

I agree with how the chief inspector of prisons set out the challenges that we face. The primary point is that children under 18 should not be deprived of their liberty in prisons or young offenders institutions. Instead, we must ensure that children receive really good-quality intensive support, perhaps in a secure setting but not in the prison system. The situation needs to change urgently.

Given that sentencing is a part of that, it is really useful that we have made some progress with, for example, “The Promise”, the proposed children’s care and justice bill and incorporation of the Convention of the Rights of the Child. However, things need to move much more quickly, because locking children in prisons as punishment is contrary to international law and standards.

We also need to focus on the fact that children go all the way up to age of 18. Indeed, the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child, in particular in general comment 24, has made it clear that this is about child justice, so we need to rethink our focus on how we support children under 18 who are in conflict with the law.

The Scottish Sentencing Council’s new guidance is a very welcome step that is based on really strong research on brain development, taking into account issues including trauma, poverty, addiction, mental health and adversity, and setting all that within an approach that is based on human rights.

The announcement that the guidance has been submitted to the High Court this month is really important; that will allow courts to have greater regard to rehabilitation for all young people up to the age of 25. Obviously, that will include how children are dealt with in the justice system, which is also important. I know that the committee is having a round-table session on child justice after this session. I think that that will provide insight.

The really important focus is on getting children out of the criminal justice system and on properly respecting and protecting their right to be seen as children first. In her report “Rights Respecting? Scotland’s approach to children in conflict with the law”, Claire Lightowler highlighted that 37 per cent of children aged 12 to 17 who have been charged with offences were dealt with in the adult system rather than in the children’s hearings system. The figure goes up to 83 per cent for 16 and 17-year-olds. Until we rectify the situation, our justice system will continue to fail to support and recognise the rights of children as children in the first instance.

That is the long answer to your question. In short, the announcement is a good thing, but things are not happening fast enough.

I have a question for Teresa Medhurst. This week, ITV News has had a series of reports from Barlinnie prison. I will ask more about that later, but the Howard League Scotland’s submission to the committee says that the throughcare support officer initiative has not been reinstated and describes that as

“an abdication of responsibility on the part of the Scottish Government”.

One Barlinnie officer talked proudly and passionately about the work that he does to liaise with prisoners once they have left prison and how beneficial that can be. Why is there such a gap between the rhetoric from the Scottish Government and the reality? Do you know whether the scheme will be reinstated?

You are right to highlight throughcare support and the scheme that existed in the Scottish Prison Service until, I think, 2019, when there was significant overcrowding and a need to focus staff on operational delivery.

Evaluation of the throughcare support scheme was undertaken. It was highly positive and the staff who were involved in the scheme brought real-life experience to share across the service to help our staff to understand some of the barriers and difficulties that people face when they leave custody and some of the reasons why we have the revolving door, with people continually returning to custody. We are looking at the throughcare support scheme for prisons and will consider how best to move forward in light of the learning from the initial scheme and learning from other services throughout Scotland.

I ask the witnesses to keep their answers fairly succinct and members to do the same with their questions. We have a lot of subject areas that we would like to get through.

I put on record how much I agree with what Bruce Adamson said about keeping children out of prison. The situation is clear cut and urgent. I agree on that for all the reasons that he articulated.

My questions are on the number of women prisoners and are directed to Wendy Sinclair-Gieben and Dr Katrina Morrison. It is nearly 10 years since Dame Elish Angiolini’s report on women offenders but we seem to have made little if any progress on the number of women prisoners. Earlier this month, the total female population was 290, including 93 remand prisoners. We know that women are often victims of abuse or have experienced trauma, and we know the disruption that is caused to families. Why are the numbers still so high? Are alternatives to custody not being used enough? Why do we not seem to have made a lot of progress on the matter?

That is a delightful question, actually, on an issue that has exercised the inspectorate for a considerable time. When you walk into a women’s prison—I strongly urge all committee members to do so—you will find caring and compassionate staff who are determined to work with a trauma-informed approach and manage the women as best they can within that parameter.

That is not an issue. What stands out when you walk around is the number of women who are apparently mentally unwell. It is clear to me that, if we had a presumption of liberty for women, particularly when they are doing a good job caring for their children, the number of women coming into custody would not be so high. If we could transfer more rapidly to in-patient care those mentally unwell women who are waiting for a bed, that would also reduce the number of women coming into custody.

We also have to look at the remand figures, although they are not anything like as shocking as the figures for children. I just want to say that I agree absolutely with Bruce Adamson, and the time to strike is now, and not four years down the road. We need to get children out of young offenders institutions.

About 26 per cent of women in prison are on remand and about 70 per cent of them do not go on to receive a custodial sentence, so it beggars belief that they are in there anyway. I strongly urge the committee to visit Cornton Vale. You will find compassionate and caring staff who are determined to do a good job—there is no question about that—but the level of people’s mental health there will appal you. I think that that is all that I need to say.

The Howard League Scotland has been raising that issue for a long time. We know that women in custody are especially vulnerable. One of the written submissions highlighted the number of women in prison who have head injuries, which were thought to be mostly as a result of domestic violence. As Wendy Sinclair-Gieben said, the staff do their very best, but it is clear that prison is not the right place for those women at all. Most of them have been sentenced for non-violent offences and, as Wendy said, many of them are on remand.

Why do we continue to have the numbers of women in custody that we do, despite numerous reports, including the Angiolini commission report and others before that? The situation is not new. It may be that some sentencers feel that prison is a place of safety for people or a place where they can receive care. It may be that there are not enough places for them in secure healthcare settings that would be more appropriate. It may be because sentencers do not know about the alternatives.

We need to be mindful of the temptation to say that we need to create more non-custodial alternatives—we might get on to that later. From the work of Professor McNeill, we know that those have tended to increase alongside the prison population, so we need to think about a more systematic diversion away from the system, at either the prosecution stage or the sentencing stage. We know that such diversion has been effective for young people, which we will discuss later, and it might be very useful for women.

Thank you for those helpful answers. Has any research been done on the reasons of the judiciary or sheriffs for giving women custodial sentences? Do they feel that there is not enough care in the community for them? It would be good to know what percentage of women are in prison because it is thought to be a safe environment, which would seem pretty contradictory. Do you know whether research has been done in the past or whether any will be done?

I do not know of any research specifically on sentencers’ views about sentencing women. In our written submission, we highlighted the lack of engagement in policy discussions from the judiciary. Of course, we absolutely support the principle of judicial independence and we want to uphold it, but we cannot have a discussion about prisons policy without their being round the table as well. When it comes to remand and sentencing children, women or, indeed, anyone, we really need to hear from the judiciary as well. The fact that we do not have that evidence is one of our frustrations, I am afraid.

I completely agree.

10:45  

We will move on to questions on the modernisation of the prison estate.

I will try to stick to that general theme, but I have some specific questions. I would like to interrogate Her Majesty’s Inspectorate of Prisons. I thank Wendy Sinclair-Gieben for her written submission, which I thought was quite stark. The first page paints a rather grim picture of Scottish prisons. It talks about overcrowding, high levels of substance abuse, mental health challenges, what is described as a

“fragile organisation with aging infrastructure”

and critical inspections. Given what we now know about the endemic problem of drug and substance abuse in Scottish prisons, have we simply got it wrong in Scotland? We have high remand rates and one of the highest incarceration rates in northern Europe, and Scottish prisons seem to be a revolving door of drugs, reoffending and poor mental health outcomes. What are we getting so wrong?

The issue is a bit of a hobby horse for me. The concept that punishment and prohibition work has never been proven, and the concept of punishment for and prohibition of substance misuse is simply not working. The cycle of reoffending is huge, the distress to families is huge and the difficulties in communities are huge. I have welcomed a fair number of recent reports, particularly Dame Carol Black’s report, which says that we need to look at substance misuse as part of the public health agenda.

We have got it wrong. We will need to undertake significant change to turn that concept around, to look at rehabilitation and support in the community and to remove the presumption of punishment as a way out. In other words, people should not go to prison for offending relating to substance misuse that is not violent—including domestic violence—or sexual; instead, such offending should be seen as part of the public health agenda, with considerable support being given in the community. That will require a significant shift in how we deal with substance misuse in Scotland. It will involve looking at the availability of safe rooms for injecting and at community support all the way through to a change in prison rules, whereby we do not punish people for relapsing.

I look at the matter in this way: I have a complete addiction to chocolate and, in all my life, I have never succeeded in overcoming that addiction. Why we assume that punishing people will help them to overcome a drug addiction is beyond me. We need to rethink our entire strategy.

In your submission, you say:

“The choice is stark—either we put fewer people in prison or we recognise that we have to pay for the prison population that we do have”.

We know that we are not putting fewer people in prison. Does that mean that we are not paying for the prison population that we have?

Yes.

My question for the Scottish Prison Service follows on from my colleague’s question. We gave about 8,000 prisoners a mobile phone for in-cell use during the pandemic, when there were obvious reasons for doing so. Those mobile phones were supposed to be unhackable. Why are so many of them being used to buy drugs in prisons?

Obviously, I saw the programme from Barlinnie. At the start of the pandemic and particularly during the lockdown, we were uncertain about for how long families would not have access to people in custody. We have never faced such a situation before. Physical visits have always been arranged for people in custody, so the situation was unprecedented.

We needed to identify at pace other means by which people could maintain family contact, not just to reassure families, who were incredibly concerned and scared for the wellbeing of their loved ones in custody, but for the mental health of those in custody. The two options that were identified were mobile phones and virtual visits. At the time, there were strict security criteria that we had to apply at pace with a provider, and we implemented the mobile phones after around four months. That was unprecedented—we would never do that in normal times, but we face unusual and unprecedented times. Since then, we have become aware of some of the areas of vulnerability and we are working to look at other potential solutions. We have continued to look at our internal security measures and technological solutions in order to minimise risks.

That was a very good answer that explained the rationale behind the policy, but it did not quite answer my question. My question was about why so many phones were hacked. The obvious next question is: what will be done about that? Are those 7,600 prisoners being allowed to keep the devices when we know that many of them—hundreds, or perhaps even thousands—are being broken and used for illicit purposes in your prison estate?

I apologise if I did not answer your question specifically. I alluded to the fact that we have security measures in prisons that enable us to identify phones that have been tampered with and there are arrangements to ensure that we apply an appropriate degree of punishment and/or withdraw the phone, depending on the circumstances and the nature of the tampering. We need to ensure that those risks can be minimised and that appropriate additional measures are put in place.

Specifically in relation to illicit drugs coming into prisons, we work closely with Police Scotland colleagues, particularly around serious organised crime, to ensure that all those risks are minimised and managed as best we can.

Thank you for clarifying that.

On the theme of the modernisation of the prison estate, that comes back to the premise of how we get prison numbers down, what type of prisons we build and how we best use public money to ensure that prisons are places that people can come out of adequately rehabilitated and suitably ready for transition back into the community, which is something that everybody wants.

Does any of the panel members have a view on that? We have some submissions on what we should do. Clearly, there is a limited amount of public money. There were announcements in the programme for government on capital spend on the prison estate, but we know that HMP Greenock and HMP Dumfries, for example, are old Victorian buildings, and it is claimed that they breach human rights by their physical nature. What do you need the Scottish Government to give you to ensure that the prison estate and the general prison environment are conducive to getting numbers down and criminals back on the straight and narrow? That is an open question for any of the panel. Perhaps you could use the chat function.

In the spirit of timekeeping and of keeping to our themes, I suggest that this is an opportunity to bring in Professor McNeill, who I am aware has been keen to come in.

The obvious answer to the question is that prisons offer a spectacularly bad return on investment—if you are trying to invest in crime reduction, that is. Prisons, by virtue of imprisoning people, tend to dehabilitate, incapacitate, disable and disintegrate them. When you invest in prisons to try to improve the rehabilitation and reintegration of the people who go through them, you are spending money to recover from harm that you have created in the first place.

Basically, punishment is not a smart response to the kind of social problems that have already been discussed in this evidence session, such as problems related to physical and mental health, head injury and substance misuse. The solutions to none of those problems will be found in prisons. Rather, prison staff and prison leaders and managers will have to struggle against the grain of what imprisonment does to people in order to produce any positive effects. Prisons strip people of liberty, status, responsibility, the capacity to act, the ability to develop as human beings, and social connections. Those are the things that help people to move away from offending and that address many of the social problems that are often associated with offending.

We need to radically rethink how we spend public resources. Because we are a liberal democracy and consider ourselves a civilised nation, when we revert to punishment, we have to create a huge and complex system that applies due process and protections before we impose it. If we put a much smaller number of people through that system, and instead spent the money that we spend on making decisions and then controlling people on providing help to people with social problems, we would begin to get a significant return on investment. Any criminologist would tell you that, if you want to reduce crime, you invest way upstream of the criminal justice system and that, when you invest in criminal justice, you invest in diversion at every possible turn.

Do you have any further questions, Mr Greene?

My other question is about parole. However, it is not on this theme, so I am happy to come back in later, if you will allow that.

There were some questions earlier about drugs in prisons. I would like to jump back and allow members to ask some further questions about that. We will then return to modernisation for a couple of final questions.

This is another question for Teresa Medhurst.

We all understand the reasons for introducing mobile phones and the incredible logistical challenge of doing so at pace. However, in the ITV news report, one prison officer said that those supposedly tamper-proof devices were hacked “within hours” of their arrival at Barlinnie.

Did you or any of your staff raise the issue with the Scottish Government? If so, what consideration was given to disclosing these serious problems to Parliament and/or the public?

Over the past year—it has probably been about a year since we introduced mobile phones—we have continually looked at where there are vulnerabilities and sought technological solutions to minimise them. We have worked through that process with Police Scotland colleagues and our technological provider.

11:00  

We have also ensured that, as we move forward on this journey, some of the difficulties have been shared with the Scottish Government. Some are operational issues that we have to deal with, and I have already mentioned the security measures that we have put in place for monitoring purposes and to ensure that we can identify when phones have been tampered with and can withdraw them. However, there are other, more policy and Government-related issues, such as whether the service should be continued and what shape it should take or whether the continuation of something like the mobile phone service would be preferred to something more technologically focused that would have a much greater ability to restrict things.

This has been a learning process for us over the past year. Much of that learning will be used to inform how best our organisation can move forward, and we will do that in conjunction with Scottish Government colleagues.

On that issue, it is worth pointing out that vulnerable prisoners are often targeted by the 600 prisoners who are marked as being members of organised crime groups.

Coming back to the security issues that you referred to in response to my colleague Jamie Greene, I spoke to Peter Smith about some of the stuff that was not broadcast. He told me that prisoners are now smuggling in seals that allow them to tamper with and reseal phones so that the staff who inspect them have no way of knowing what has happened. Is there any way in which you can get to the bottom of that? Can you quantify how many phones have been compromised?

I do not have that information at the moment. I know that Mr Smith conducted a number of conversations while in Barlinnie, but the different means and methods by which serious organised crime can infiltrate not just our country but our prisons is clearly a significant issue. That is why we have such close working relationships with Police Scotland colleagues and why we work with them fairly intensively on the various threats to and vulnerabilities in our prison service that arise. The dynamics of drugs not just in prisons but in the country are rapidly changing, and things are becoming ever more sophisticated. As a result, it is important for us to be as forward facing and up to date as possible, and we work with a range of experts and organisations to get a better understanding of the issues around drugs in prisons and the measures that we need to take to minimise those risks.

If you have no more questions, Mr Findlay, I will pull the discussion back to Ms McNeill, who I think has some questions on the modernisation of the estate.

My question is for Teresa Medhurst. I understand that Barlinnie is the largest prison in the estate. It has had some refurbishment through the years and I visited it a few times before it was refurbished. I am a bit surprised that it has taken so long for the replacement to come around given Barlinnie’s importance to Glasgow and the west of Scotland. The prison was meant to house mainly short-term prisoners and, as I saw from the piece on STV that was referred to earlier, it is continually over capacity.

We cannot possibly fulfil any of the aspirations that we talked about unless prisons are modernised. I ask you to talk me through what is happening. I believe that the replacement will not be completed until 2024-25. I have lodged a parliamentary question on the matter but I am still waiting on an answer. I know that it took some time to secure the land for the prison but there seems to me to be quite a delay between 2021 and 2024-25. Will you speak to why it will take so long? Do you agree that there is an imperative to replace Barlinnie prison as soon as possible?

I think that that question was for Ms Medhurst. Is that correct?

Yes. It is for the chief executive.

I think that we have lost the connection to Ms Medhurst.

We have Allister Purdie.

Mr Purdie, could you pick up that question while we try to get Ms Medhurst back?

Yes, absolutely. Thank you for the question.

To refer to Fergus McNeill’s point, the ideal position further down the line would be for us to stop bringing people into prison and to stop building a new prison in Glasgow for 1,200 people.

The date relates to us being able to secure the land, as Ms McNeill rightly said, and receive the capital money to do that. The design stage—the discussion and collaboration with our partners about what the prison needs to be—has already started. It is part of what will be delivered in Glasgow overall.

That is what has taken the time. The land has been available and the money is now available, so we will move the project forward as quickly as we can, going into design and then to construction through to 2025-26.

My question is why it has taken so long. Why would it take to 2025-26? Is that just how long it takes to build a prison? It seems an extraordinarily long timetable. That means that, for five years, until we imprison fewer people, the largest prison in the estate, which is over capacity, will still take the wrong prisoners—it is meant to be a short-term prison but it is taking long-term prisoners—and we will not be able to get prisoners out of their cells. What is the explanation for why it will take until 2026? I thought that it was 2025, but now you are saying that it is 2026.

The first thing is that we need to get the capital money to be able to build it. It is possible to build a prison in three to four years from design through construction to opening it. We need to secure the capital funding to be able to do that, which allows us to move the project forward in the time frame that I just discussed.

So you have the money, but it takes three to four years to design and build a prison.

Yes.

That is your evidence. When we built Kilmarnock and Addiewell prisons, they took four years to complete. Is that right?

It takes us three years at least to get a prison ready—to get it designed, have it constructed, open it and mobilise. We are talking about a three to four-year period to do that.

I am sorry to dwell on this. Obviously, I do not know anything about the design of prisons—no, I know a little bit about it because I remember the design of Addiewell and Kilmarnock and how it was changed to make prison officers’ lines of sight easier. Does it take three years up and down the country to design a prison? Would it be the same in England or Wales?

No. Things can happen simultaneously. We have to appoint a contractor and get planning permission. The design is then agreed and we discuss with the partners what the establishment needs to do. Then we start the construction phase, which typically takes 18 months. Then we have the mobilisation to bring the people in. It takes that period to do that. That is our experience from building and opening Low Moss prison in Bishopbriggs, and from designing, building and opening HMP Grampian up in the north-east.

Thank you. After Collette Stevenson, I will bring in Wendy Sinclair-Gieben for any final comments that she may have.

Good morning. I thank all the witnesses for their good submissions.

I want to touch on prison modernisation, which Pauline McNeill commented on. It would be remiss of me not to ask about sustainability and climate change in relation to the buildings. Has sustainability been part of the talks about Barlinnie? Can the building be more sustainable? What will that look like?

The issue was mentioned yesterday by Michael Matheson, the cabinet secretary, at the Net Zero, Energy and Transport Committee. One comment featured the buzzword “prosumer”, which means a producer and consumer of energy and is relevant to energy efficiency. I am keen to know about that aspect.

My other question involves Pauline McNeill’s comments about Barlinnie’s being over capacity. When I was an independent prison monitor at HMP Shotts, one of the most common requests that I got was to do with progression. The majority of people in HMP Shotts were high-tariff prisoners who wanted to progress down the prison estate. Their problem was not only that Barlinnie was over capacity but that they were unable to get on to any rehabilitation programmes that were available.

I put those points to Allister Purdie and, if she is back online, Teresa Medhurst.

Mr Purdie, will you respond?

Sorry—I did not know whether Teresa was going to pick that up. I thank Collette Stevenson for her questions.

The progression pathway has been impacted by coronavirus. The number of long-term prisoners who come in through the local prison at Barlinnie and then progress through to Shotts is a consistent pipeline. That creates a backlog of people who could move on to rehabilitative programmes in order to start their journey towards the semi-open estate and then on to our open estate up at Castle Huntly.

This is about trying to match the dates that are critical for release and review through the Parole Board for Scotland to make sure that things are done fairly and consistently. It can sometimes feel unfair to someone who has been in custody for a while that somebody who comes in later with a critical date can overtake them—for example, because that person’s review is sooner—and so progress forward and have an opportunity to participate in the programmes before they do. The backlog was previously a problem, and the pandemic has concentrated it.

Thank you. Is Teresa Medhurst not with us?

Sorry—

She is back. Would you like to pick that up quickly, Ms Medhurst?

Ms Stevenson asked two questions. The first was about the sustainability of the new builds. I assure the committee that we look at all aspects of our new builds in relation to sustainability, zero carbon and so on, and we make sure that we are connected to new developments, new technologies and new legislative requirements. We try to future proof, as best we can, as part of our planning and projections.

Secondly, as Allister Purdie has rightly pointed out, issues with progression have been exacerbated by the pandemic. However, considerations of progression go wider than prisoner programmes. We have in each establishment risk management teams who consider the wider risk issues and the risk profile of the individual and who take that information into account as part of the individual’s progression journey.

Thank you, Ms Medhurst. Ms Mackay, I think that you have a couple of questions, before I bring in Wendy Sinclair-Gieben.

11:15  

I have a question for Teresa Medhurst and Allister Purdie about temporary and permanent arrangements for Covid challenges. In a previous evidence session, Ms Medhurst, you said that family video contact would be continued when we finally get through the pandemic, which is very welcome. Will you expand on that? Are any other measures being taken? The organisation Families Outside is very keen to make the best possible use of technology—for example, so that a parent could go to a parents’ evening.

I will tag on my second question, so that you can roll your answers into one. I welcome women’s custody units. We know about the importance of attachment between mothers and babies. Are any mother and baby units planned within the women’s custody units?

On the issues around the Covid challenges and the use of technology, we are working on a digital strategy to increase and enhance our technological capacity. We are doing that to free up time for staff to spend on the relationships that are critical in supporting rehabilitation and motivating those in custody to take on more of the opportunities that are available to them. We are also doing it to expand the range of opportunities for those in custody to access a wider range of support through technological solutions. Clearly, the most important of those will be access to family. That is a critical and central part of the digital strategy.

The community custody units have been designed in a flexible way to ensure that we have the ability to support a range of needs, including the needs of mothers and babies, for whom being close to home is critical. The potential for that to happen has been designed into the facilities that are being developed and built as we speak.

The potential is there, but will it happen? I am thinking about overnight stays, for example, which would greatly enhance the mental health of the women and help with many of their problems. Is that actually going to happen?

I would strongly suggest that we would be failing if it did not happen, but we need to understand some of the issues and factors at play in smaller residential units and ensure that we take account of the needs of everyone in those units as well as those broader family needs. With regard to children and their ability to spend time with their mothers, including overnight, we will assess each case individually, as we always do. We will then identify how best to meet the individual’s needs, particularly taking into account the points that were made earlier about the rights of the child. We absolutely need to take cognisance of that.

I am keen to move on as quickly as we can, as we still have a wee bit to get through. However, before we move on, does Wendy Sinclair-Gieben, have any final comments to make on these issues?

Yes, I will gladly make some comments. It is worth the committee knowing that HMIPS has undertaken a thematic review on progression, which, basically, is what happens to people as they walk through their prison journey. We have had full co-operation from the Scottish Prison Service, the Risk Management Authority and the Parole Board, and I think that we will be able to address some of the issues, find the underlying causes and come up with some recommendations to resolve the issues. Allister Purdie is exactly right, in that the problems existed to some degree before Covid but were extremely exacerbated by it.

On substance misuse, I would really like the committee to look at the evidence around diversion, depenalisation and all the issues that will help us to reduce the prison population and, I hope, make the replacement of Greenock and Dumfries prisons, and even Barlinnie, unnecessary. That would be my dream.

I absolutely agree with Bruce Adamson. We need to get the children who are in prison at the moment out of there. That does not mean that they do not have to be in secure care; it simply means that they should not be in a prison. The committee must, urgently, think through and look at the evidence on that. I am really pleased that there is an evidence session on that later this morning.

We have about 20 minutes left, so I ask members and witnesses to keep your questions and responses as succinct as possible. We will now focus on the parole system, starting with questions from Russell Findlay.

I declare an interest, in that I have recently submitted objections to a prisoner being released—the prisoner is in custody for attacking me. My question is for John Watt. In the first line of your submission, you describe the Parole Board as “Scotland’s parole court”. How can the public attend these courts?

The public cannot attend parole hearings, as the Parole Board is a court for very narrow parole purposes. The parole rules, as they presently stand, tend to militate against public attendance. There are those with an interest in parole—victims, for example—who can attend. Others can attend for educational or developmental purposes. It would require a change in the rules to allow wider access for the public at large. That is my answer. I would like us to be as open as we could be.

There is perhaps a perception that anonymous middle-class professionals such as you and I decide the fate of dangerous individuals and whether they are returned to the type of communities that we tend not to live in. If sentencing is, quite rightly, transparent, why is there no transparency on the time that is served? Has the Parole Board had any discussion with the Scottish Government about moving in that direction?

I do not quite understand the question. Will you enlarge on it, please?

As things stand, the public have no means of knowing when individuals are granted parole. Is there any move involving the Parole Board and the Scottish Government to change that and to bring in increased transparency?

Yes, there is. The Parole Board’s view is that there is no reason why release on parole should not be made public. For the sake of transparency, I would be content to have limited information available on the board’s website covering that kind of thing, unless there were security or safety implications—there are cases about which we would have to be careful. Other than that, and resources permitting, I see no reason why that should not happen.

That is good to know.

On the second part of your question, which was about discussions with the Scottish Government, the Management of Offenders (Scotland) Act 2019 restricts the provision of information to when release is granted in life cases, which is a narrow band of publicity and a very limited number of cases. The act also requires complete anonymity. That is the law, so we apply it.

I will bring in Mr Greene before we move on to look at care of prisoners.

Thank you, convener. I have a supplementary on the line of questioning on parole. I indicated that I also have a question on alternatives to custody, because we have not really discussed that issue today, but I am happy to keep that for later, if we have time.

The number of people involved in the victim notification scheme is dropping year on year. At the moment, it is an opt-in service. I vividly remember from reading the Parole Board for Scotland’s submission that the word “victim” was not used once. Is that not the root of the problem? The entire submission is centred around how we make parole better for those involved in the hearings—in other words, those in prison. None of the submissions says how we can proactively improve the victim notification scheme, so that we tell people who have been affected by serious crimes that those who perpetrated them are back out on the street, in order that they do not bump into them in the queue at the supermarket.

The board is committed to providing as much information as possible to victims. Next Wednesday, I am due to take part in a round-table meeting for which I have a lengthy paper consisting of six pages about the board’s desire to assist victims as far as possible. The focus of this meeting is not victims, but I am very happy to talk about how we would like to support victims.

We go above and beyond our statutory requirements. Some considerable time ago—before there was a statutory requirement—we arranged for victims to attend in person a tribunal at Greenock, which I chaired, so it is perhaps unfair to castigate us for not mentioning victims, given that we are scheduled to talk about them next week. If you have specific questions, I am happy to deal with them.

The board has to be as open as it can be in providing victims with as much information and support as it can. Whether it does that directly or through other, perhaps better-qualified, bodies is an open question. I agree with the sentiment of your question; victims must understand what is happening.

I am sure that we will have that discussion in future sessions. I look forward to reading your submission.

Convener, would you like me to ask my other question now?

I am keen to move on to look at care of prisoners and deaths in custody.

Sure. Those are important issues.

I have alluded to the fact that I was an independent prison monitor, and I inspected the national health service and the health of prisoners. When I visited the healthcare suite in Shotts prison, most prisoners were allocated their prescription drugs on a Friday. That was quite concerning, because it led to a lot of them sharing those drugs when they were locked up over the weekend with very little in the way of purposeful activity, as no educational facilities were available over the weekend. Those drugs became a currency, with them being swapped and whatnot. People who were suffering, to a varying degree, with mental health issues were also at risk of overdose. Angela Constance, the Minister for Drugs Policy, talked about slow-release injections that could be given by the NHS.

Has that situation changed? Is the NHS still dispensing drugs on a Friday afternoon? If so, could that be changed? Could slow-release injections be used so that there is no risk of overdose to the prison population? What can be done to address the challenges with drugs in prisons, such as their being used as currency?

11:30  

Thank you for that interesting question. The drug by injection that you mentioned is Buvidal, which is highly regarded by prisoners and staff because it removes the risk of people being bullied out of their drugs or having them stolen when they leave prison. We view it as a good success story, if you like. Although there are some problems, prisoners have told us that the fog in their brain that comes with methadone lifts under Buvidal. All in all, it is a success story.

Drugs in prison are a major issue. I have talked about revising the prison rules, and one thing that needs to happen is a reduction in the amount of drugs coming in through the post in almost undetectable quantities. Prisons are phenomenal at detecting drugs and preventing them from coming in—indeed, when you look at reports about how much they stop getting in, it is amazing—but novel psychoactive drugs, for example, can be come in on paper. A solicitor’s letter, say, can be forged and the paper soaked in drugs to be sent in, popped in a kettle and sent out again. That sort of thing can cause real problems. We could change the prison rules to prevent all legal letters, at least, coming in by post, and we could also consider photocopying prisoner letters.

However, as you will know from being an IPM, we are always playing catch-up with drugs. It is a major problem in prison; stopping them coming in is a major problem, as is providing support and rehabilitation to prevent people from wanting to take drugs. It is a huge issue for the prison service, and we need to move to a recovery model, which is something that the next panel can discuss at length.

As you will know from your time as an IPM, Ms Stevenson, there are different means and mechanisms for dealing with the issue, with different arrangements for people who are vulnerable with regard to in-person medication. As Wendy Sinclair-Gieben said, slow-release Buvidal has much more potential to minimise risk to individuals and ensure that people can be better supported on their recovery journey. Wendy is right: anecdotally, people seem to be much more able to focus on rehabilitation and release with that medication in a way that they find difficult with methadone.

As for whether it has changed anything, quite a lot of prescribed medicine goes into prisons every day, and with the amount of time that that takes, it very much drives how we operate our prisons. It is a matter that the NHS can talk about, but we would warmly welcome things such as Buvidal in making more time available for rehabilitation and ensuring that risk is minimised.

On recovery and the arrangements that Wendy Sinclair-Gieben referred to, I think that psychoactive substances have been a game changer for everyone. The methods and means by which people can traffic them are, for the most part, well known, but we are considering other measures that we can take, particularly with mail coming into prisons, to minimise those risks as much as possible.

Collette Stevenson, is there anything else that you want to raise?

I wanted to touch on electronic mail, because you can now email prisoners rather than sending hard copies. I suppose that depends on the volume that is sent. I am conscious of the time, so I could write to panel members about that.

Thank you for that response. I know that Fulton MacGregor was keen to ask some questions on purposeful activity in prisons and the transition phase into the community.

Fergus McNeill touched on my area of questioning earlier and I know that he has been waiting in the chat to come back in, so I will give him the opportunity to do so. I completely concur with what he said about where the balance should be as we move forward to the society that we want to become.

My question for the panel, starting with Professor McNeill, is this: what impact can rehabilitation services in prisons have, whether those are services that prisons provide or those that are outsourced to third sector organisations, local authority workers or NHS workers? What impact has the Covid-19 pandemic had on that area, particularly in relation to the outsourcing of services? It is quite a broad question.

Do you want me to come in on that first?

Yes. I know that you had been looking to come back in anyway, so please bring up any other points that you want to cover.

I will try to be brief. I put on record what I put in the chat, which is my frustration that when we talk about modernising the prison estate and responding to problems such as the issues with mobile phones or psychoactive substances, it feels as if we are talking about redecorating the house and buying new furniture when a structural engineer has told us that the foundations are collapsing. If you read the submissions to the committee carefully enough, you will see lots of criticism of the foundations on which our system is built.

Having put that point on the record, I want to say that rehabilitation in prison is really difficult and the evidence on rehabilitative programmes is that they work better in communities than in prisons. The obvious reason for that is that you can try to learn something in an institutional environment, but the first thing that you have to do when you are released is transfer that learning to a new context. That is difficult for social work students on placement or medical students who are moving from universities to hospitals; the transfer of learning is a complicated activity and prisoners are not well supported in taking that learning from inside prison to out in the community.

One way that we can ease the transfer of learning is by ensuring that it happens through partnerships with outside organisations. Criminal justice social work, the third sector, educational institutions and health services have a huge role to play there. The short answer is that if we are to try to rehabilitate people in prisons, which is not the best strategy, we have to do it by developing partnerships.

If prisons are overcrowded, meaningful rehabilitation cannot be provided, and the European Committee for the Prevention of Torture and Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment repeatedly tells us that our prisons are overcrowded. I cannot dress this up any differently: we do not rehabilitate prisoners well, we do not prepare them for release well and we do not support them on release well, because our system is chock-a-block with people who should not be in it. That is the first and fundamental problem that we need to address. I will shut up and let others in.

I completely agree. We send too many people to prison and there is definitely a job to be done, but I am aware that this evidence session is on the prison estate. On that basis, I want to ask Alan Staff about how the pandemic has impacted on the work that takes place in prisons—whether that is what prisons provide themselves or what is provided by external people coming in.

It has been interesting to see how many organisations have responded to the pandemic in various ways, from changing to remote ways of working to variations in gate liberation work. However, you cannot deny that access—face-to-face relationship building, which is essential—has been the key loss over the whole Covid period. We talk about rehabilitation, but perhaps we forget that the single most important factor in rehabilitation is hope. If we do not have hope, there is not a lot of point in rehabilitation. In order to create hope, we must have a pathway—some sense that there is life and a future outside the prison. We cannot afford to continue to keep treating prison as containing some sort of subset of humanity or being a silo on its own. It is part of the journey, and the third sector has been very efficient and effective in creating an in-reach process, but that is nowhere near complete; it is nowhere near being available everywhere.

Funding has been a particular issue, and committee members may or may not be aware that, at the beginning of next year, European social funding will stop. European social funding has been the one source of funding that has allowed organisations such as ours to work specifically with people with additional needs, such as people with sexual offence records, people with domestic violence—[Inaudible.]—group of the prison population. That group of people has not been recognised with regard to the additional responses that we need to put in place to allow them to transition safely and effectively into the community. The third sector is capable of doing a lot of the work on rehabilitation, but we need to be involved.

I know that we are running out of time. Dr Katrina Morrison and John Watt want to come in. Will you pick up briefly on my question and perhaps address the general issue—Rona Mackay raised this in relation to women’s prisons—of family contact in rehabilitation and how that can be done safely? I will not ask any further questions, in the interest of time, convener.

I agree absolutely with Fergus McNeill’s point about rehabilitation in prison. It is not the place where we should be rehabilitating people, given that when someone re-enters the community, they are trying to undo many of the damages that have been done. I also agree that it is much harder to do anything positive in a context where everything is overcrowded.

I want to make a point about work. At the moment, there is a real opportunity with regard to work and provision of skills and qualifications for people in custody, given the significant labour shortages. We will all have read about the shortages in construction, joinery, catering and so on. With a real concerted effort and partnership working with organisations and community partners, there is the potential to allow people to gain skills in sectors in which there are jobs for the future. That will certainly give them a lot of hope for the future, to echo Alan Staff’s point.

That work should be properly remunerated. There are many jurisdictions in which people in custody are paid properly for the work that they do. That work is taxed in Italy, meaning that it generates revenue that can then go back into the system. The feeling of earning an income can really help the individual. They can send some of that money back to their family, and it can provide them hope for the future. There are many things to consider there regarding work.

11:45  

I ask you to be as brief as you can, Mr Watt. I will then bring this evidence session to a close.

The parole system in this country is wasteful. Delays in rehabilitative programmes and the consequences after that, evaluation, the granting of permission to go into the community and the wait for a place in the open estate can potentially add two years to the time when a prisoner can realistically be considered for parole. That is two years in a cell when that is perhaps unnecessary.

To echo previous comments about community alternatives, we should be searching for proportionate ways to restrict liberty. That means that there should be options in the community that are proportionate to the risk. Custody in a prison is perhaps not proportionate to the risk. That may well allow more prisoners to be released and fewer prisoners to be recalled into custody. Without that proportionate restriction on liberty in the community, the choice is a binary one: it is either in the community or in jail, which is inflexible and results in people being in prison who really should not be there.

I know that we probably did not get through a lot of the questions and responses that we would have liked to, so I extend an invitation to the witnesses: if you wish to raise any outstanding points with the committee, please feel free to contact us in writing, and we will very much take your evidence into account.

I extend my thanks to all our witnesses today. Thank you very much for your contributions. We will now take a short break before we hear from our next set of witnesses.

11:47 Meeting suspended.  

11:54 On resuming—