Scotland's prison population to soar by 20% in next ten years

Published on Friday 4 March 2011 15:07

The prison population will continue to surge in the coming years and reach almost 10,000 within a decade, official figures have shown.

It means that prisoner numbers will have almost doubled since 2000 when the average daily number was about 6,000.

There were about 7,900 prisoners in Scottish jails on average in 2010/11, but this will jump to a new record 9,500 by 2019/20, according to official government projections released yesterday.

The recent moves to phase out short-term sentences of three months or less, which were passed by Parliament, have not been factored into the projections.

But the figures show that the rapid population increase between 2006 and 2009 appears to have levelled out during 2010, with the remand population showing a decline since its peak in mid-2008.

Justice secretary Kenny MacAskill said the "relentless" rise in the prison population indicated the need for alternatives to custody for low-level criminals.

The numbers of prisoners sentenced to fewer than four years rose sharply from 3,000 to 3,500 between 2008 and 2009, before levelling out in 2010.

Mr MacAskill said: "I am pleased that there has been a levelling off in the numbers of short-term and remand prisoners. But if we are to further slow or reverse the trend, then we need to have credible alternatives to custody for low-level offenders.

"That is why we have introduced Community Payback Orders - tough community sentences that see offenders doing work that communities themselves want to see carried out to improve their local areas."

The statistics show around 13 per cent of prisoners are young offenders, while women currently make up around 5 per cent of the jail population. The number of women being jailed has almost doubled over the past decade.

Mr MacAskill added: "While sentencing is rightly a matter for individual sheriffs and judges based on the evidence before them, they have my full support in handing out longer sentences for serious crimes.

"Indeed, the most recent criminal proceedings statistics show that serious criminals are being sentenced to prison for longer. The courts are sending out a clear message that if you commit serious crimes, you will be punished and you will face a lengthy prison sentence."

A report into moving prisoners from closed to open conditions was also published yesterday. The report by Chief Inspector of Prisons, Brigadier Hugh Monro, found the rate of absconding from open prisons had been greatly reduced over the past five years.

He said: "It is clear that significant advances have been made in the prisoner progression and risk assessment processes since the absconding of prisoners Robert Foye and Brian Martin from open conditions in 2007 and 2009.

"It is also clear that no matter how well developed and sophisticated the Scottish Prison Service's risk assessment processes become, risk assessment itself is a fallible undertaking."