Current status: Answered by Angela Constance on 10 March 2025
To ask the Scottish Government how many prisoners have been given early release from HMP Barlinnie in each month since January 2022.
I have asked Teresa Medhurst, Chief Executive of the Scottish Prison Service (SPS), to respond. Her response is as follows:
SPS have proactively published a range of data relating to Emergency Release (ER) on SPS Website, this includes a recently published a summary report of ER returns to custody data.
We continue to be as open and transparent as possible, whilst continuing to meet our statutory obligation to ensure that those in our care have their personal information protected; as such we have taken the decision not to publish a breakdown of establishments of those released under the ER scheme as some of the data could relate to a small group of individuals, which may lead to their inadvertent identification.