Question reference: S6W-25537
- Asked by: Pauline McNeill, MSP for Glasgow, Scottish Labour
- Date lodged: 14 February 2024
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Current status: Answered by Angela Constance on 27 February 2024
Question
To ask the Scottish Government how many seizures of illicit drugs have occurred in prisons in each of the last five years, also broken down by (a) establishment and (b) drug type.
Answer
I have asked Teresa Medhurst, Chief Executive of the Scottish Prison Service (SPS), to respond. Her response is as follows:
The health and wellbeing of those who live and work in our prisons is a key priority for the Scottish Prison Service and we continue to work with numerous organisations to offer those in their care a suite of support to address both their addiction and recovery journey.
1. The total number of Drug Recoveries from 1 January 2019 to 31 December 2023 are appended in the following table. This data includes both in prison and preventative finds.
Establishment | 2019 | 2020 | 2021 | 2022 | 2023 | Total |
Addiewell | 252 | 624 | 476 | 412 | 237 | 2,050 |
Barlinnie | 458 | 277 | 389 | 237 | 286 | 1,363 |
Bella | 1 | 2 | 1 | |||
Cornton Vale | 17 | 19 | 22 | 12 | 99 | |
Dumfries | 31 | 59 | 111 | 60 | 29 | 676 |
Edinburgh | 290 | 733 | 1,158 | 339 | 415 | 2,660 |
Glenochil | 34 | 180 | 715 | 90 | 140 | 1,251 |
Grampian | 127 | 144 | 182 | 244 | 232 | 767 |
Greenock | 87 | 159 | 132 | 98 | 70 | 611 |
Inverness | 141 | 119 | 156 | 112 | 135 | 1,041 |
Kilmarnock | 535 | 929 | 1,102 | 519 | 513 | 3,087 |
Lilias | 2 | 265 | ||||
Low Moss | 190 | 336 | 264 | 232 | 265 | 1,071 |
Open Estate | 63 | 57 | 60 | 19 | 49 | 477 |
Perth | 161 | 371 | 506 | 285 | 278 | 1,764 |
Polmont | 90 | 256 | 407 | 574 | 441 | 1,597 |
Shotts | 131 | 309 | 673 | 196 | 270 | 1,321 |
Stirling | 12 | 3,376 | ||||
Total | 2,607 | 4,572 | 6,353 | 3,430 | 3,376 | 16,962 |
1. SPS work in partnership with Dundee University and Police Scotland to help identify and understand the illicit substance market. The continued change in drug compounds and poly-substance detections makes it difficult to categorically confirm substance types found and as such SPS is unable to accurately identify the drugs recovered.