Chamber and committees

Question reference: S6W-03486

Asked by: Liam McArthur, MSP for Orkney Islands, Scottish Liberal Democrats
Date lodged: 5 October 2021
Current status: Answered by Keith Brown on 13 October 2021

Question

To ask the Scottish Government what the average number of hours per week that convicted prisoners spend on purposeful activity (a) across the prison estate and (b) in each penal establishment has been in each year since 2016-17, also broken down by those on (i) short sentences, (ii) long sentences and (iii) remand.

Answer

I have asked Teresa Medhurst, Interim Chief Executive of the Scottish Prison Service (SPS), to respond. Her response is as follows:

The average number of hours per week that convicted prisoners spend on purposeful activity a) across the prison estate and (b) in each penal establishment in each year since 2016-17 is as follows: -

Year	2016-17	2017-18	2018-19	2019-20	2020-21	2021-22 ‎ (Apr to Aug 21)
Average Purposeful Activity hours per week	22	21	20	19	14	17

Per Establishment	2016-17	2017-18	2018-19	2019-20	2020-21	2021-22 ‎ (Apr to Aug 21)
Barlinnie	16	16	14	12	10	10
Cornton Vale	22	21	19	20	20	28
Dumfries	19	19	18	15	8	10
Edinburgh	14	12	12	13	9	11
Glenochil	20	18	17	16	11	11
Grampian	31	28	25	25	19	16
Greenock	20	22	20	22	19	22
Inverness	27	27	25	25	24	26
Low Moss	27	24	23	22	16	16
Open Estate	23	22	22	21	20	23
Perth	21	21	18	14	9	12
Polmont	20	20	21	18	14	21
Shotts	22	22	25	25	9	10

Unfortunately, the SPS does not record the information relating to sentence length for reporting or recording purposes, and are therefore unable to break down purposeful activity hours by (i) short sentences, (ii) long sentences and (iii) remand.

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