Chamber and committees

During a visit to a prison the prison monitor must be given free access to every part of the prison and every prisoner within the prison.

Yes, the monitors will notify the governor and the Chief Inspector of any circumstances relating to the condition of the prison or treatment of any prisoner or group of prisoners.

The current annual budget of the prison visiting committee system is £70,000. This budget currently sits under the Scottish Prison Service. This budget will be returned to central government to fund the new monitoring service along with an estimated additional cost of approximately £55,556.

The monitors will report directly to the Chief Inspector who has a duty to report annually to the Scottish Parliament. The annual report will include a separate section on monitoring. The Chief Inspector also meets regularly with the Cabinet Secretary for Justice and officials in the Community Justice Division.

The Chief Inspector will recruit and select the monitors based on applicants' experience, skills and knowledge. The appointments will be made by fair and open competition and recruitment will be conducted by the Scottish Government.

Under the new monitoring service the monitors will visit their allocated prisons no less than once every three weeks.

I wrote to the Chair of the National Preventative Mechanism (NPM), Nick Hardwick on 24 May outlining the proposal for independent monitoring. Officials are liaising with NPM officials on the proposals.

The monitors will access any prison either unannounced or by appointment, at any time. In most cases it will be unannounced.

Under the new monitoring service it is proposed that there will be three monitors employed and each monitor will cover one geographical area. The three monitors will be individuals rather than organisations.

It is likely that the Chief Inspector will deploy the monitors to prisons as shown in the following table. This system will also allow monitors to be deployed individually or collectively to prisons where the need is deemed greatest by the Chief Inspector.

Note: *HMP Grampian from 2014.